REM
by Cimz
Summary: As Todd searches for Victor and the Triskelion Organization, he imagines a different path his life might have taken. Todd/Blair. Prospect Park Season One compliant. Complete.
1. West Gladys Street

Todd had been sent on some sort of warped scavenger hunt slash wild goose chase, and there was nothing he could do about it. He wasn't going to go home and encourage the freaks who had been sending him messages to take another shot at Blair or one of the children. And he wasn't going to ignore the messages and his only chance at finding out who was responsible for this. That left the detestable option C: dancing like their puppet on a string and trying not to walk into a trap.

The last message he'd received in Llanview had directed him to 5316 West Gladys Street. There was no Gladys Street in Llanview, but there were a handful scattered around the country. Two jumped out at him: one in Kaplan, Louisiana, not far from where he'd been held prisoner for eight years, and one in Chicago, Illinois, where he'd spent a childhood not much more enjoyable than his imprisonment.

He tried Louisiana first. Kaplan's West Gladys Street was a dirt road crawling with small children who spoke in soft southern drawls that made him homesick for Blair. They stopped and stared when Todd approached, but politely escorted him to number 5316 when he asked. An old woman opened the door to him and handed him a card with an all-too-familiar triskelion on it.

"The man said that if a stranger came around, to give him this," she explained.

"What man?" Todd asked eagerly.

"Just a man," she said, and try as he might Todd couldn't get her to elaborate.

He flipped open the card.

_Try again._

It took a day to get to Chicago. Gladys Street was halfway to Oak Park, and while most of the homes were buzzing with activity, number 5316 was empty.

The door was unlocked; Todd walked in, one hand tight on his gun. The house was small and empty, but for one note left on the kitchen counter.

_August 20. 10:00 p.m._

That gave him a day to wait.

He got a room in a hotel downtown and holed up inside of it. Chicago had nothing he wanted to see. He'd been just fine with leaving it forever when L.U. had offered him a full athletic scholarship. He'd barely been back since, and those memories weren't good ones, either.

But it seemed that he was alone in his desire to forget. Downstairs, the hotel's restaurant was hosting the 20th reunion of one of the local high schools. The music drifted up to him. It hadn't seemed so annoying in 1993.

_One, two princes kneel before you  
That what I said now  
Princes, princes who adore you  
Just go ahead now  
One has diamonds in his pockets  
That's some bread, now…_

_"You might be a prince,"_ Blair had said when he'd shown her the key Peter Manning had revealed on his death bed, just down the street from where Todd was now.

It might have been okay to be a prince. Being a Lord was something he could have done without. More and more he believed that everything in the mess he found himself in now went back to Lord family's twisted wreck of a family tree.

_Marry him, marry me  
I'm the one that loved you baby can't you see?  
Ain't got no future or family tree  
But I know what a prince and lover ought to be  
I know what a prince and lover ought be  
_  
He'd barely been gone for two days. It was too early to waste one of the prepaid disposable phones he and Blair had acquired in between the marriage license and the wedding bands.

But he deeply, desperately wanted to hear her voice. He wanted to bitch to her about the stupid KAD-esque soundtrack that was making him feel like Zach and Powell might walk through the door at any moment. That was safe enough, wasn't it? He wouldn't tell Blair where he'd been or where he was or anything that might put her in danger.

He looked at his watch. It was after one in the morning, but it was the night of the Man of the Year Ceremony back in Llanview and no doubt Blair had stayed late at Shelter making sure everything had gone smoothly. She'd be awake.

Besides, the phones weren't going to do them any good if he got himself kidnapped tomorrow. He had nineteen hours to wait.

He used the first of his phones to call the first of Blair's.

"Todd?" she asked.

From that one word, he could tell that she'd been crying. She'd leaned against the door and cried when he'd left, too, and he'd stood on the outside listening to her and feeling like the piece of shit he was.

"It's me," he told her. His own eyes were starting to fill with tears. "I wanted to hear your voice. I thought you'd be up because of Clint's big show."

"You heard about that?" she asked.

"They set that up before I left," he reminded her.

"Oh. No, they took the award away from Clint and gave it to Bo instead. Clint got drunk and crashed the ceremony. His acceptance speech went something like 'from the bottom of my heart, screw y'all.' We had to have the paramedics strap him to a gurney and get him out of—"

Whatever else Blair had meant to tell Todd was lost when Todd choked on his own laughter. The lost time with Blair and his children was the worst, but missing out on watching the Buchanans make fools of themselves sucked in its own right.

"It wasn't funny," Blair said lamely.

"There is no way that wasn't funny," Todd corrected. "You don't have to pretend to be a pillar of polite society with me, Blair."

Blair chuckled weakly. "It might have been a little bit funny. But never mind that. Where are you?"

"You know I'm not gonna tell you," he pleaded. "Don't waste the time we have asking questions I can't answer."

"I know. I just… I couldn't not try. It sounds like you're at a party. I can hear music."

"Class reunion downstairs," he grumbled. "It sucks. I don't know about you, but I don't need to relive 1993."

"Neither do I," Blair agreed.

"Makes me think about Kevin Buchanan."

"Makes me think about Asa Buchanan."

Todd winced. "You win this round of the most pathetic contest. How bad did Clint mess up Shelter? You gonna have to close for repairs?"

"Nah. No real damage done. Business as usual tomorrow."

"I wish I could be there. Just sitting on that stool staring at you. That's all."

"Drinking my scotch."

"Listening to that kid you hired sing about getting white girl wasted. Did you have her perform for Clint tonight?"

This time Blair laughed for real. "No. We should have had her write a special version." She sang a few bars. _"Dancing in my boots getting cowboy wasted."_

"I miss you," escaped his throat without permission.

"I miss you, too."

"Anyone else in Llanview notice I left?"

"Viki pumped me for information. She's worried about you."

"Did you tell her anything?"

"Of course not. Nora asked where you were. That was weird."

"She was just hoping you'd tell her you chopped me up and left me in a freezer somewhere."

Blair didn't bother to comment. Instead, she continued her recitation. "Tea… Tea's been okay. She's really the only one who has any idea what's going on. I—I showed her my ring. I'm sorry. I just had to tell someone. I was missing you so bad, and she can't tell—"

"Not unless she wants to lose her best chance at ever seeing Victor again," Todd completed bitterly. "You get a nice chain for your ring?" Blair couldn't very well walk around Llanview with a wedding band on her finger when their marriage was a secret. She had promised to wear it on a chain around her neck, close to her heart.

"I couldn't bring myself to take it off. I wear it behind another ring. It's so small it's easy to hide, and people are used to me wearing a lot of costume jewelry. No one's gonna suspect."

"I can see Dorian and Jack sneaking into your room at night just to make sure I'm not there and finding it."

Blair laughed. "That's why the door is locked. Anyway, Jack was really sweet tonight. I told him how much I love you and I think… I think he's coming around."

"Dorian coming around too?" Todd asked wryly.

He could almost hear Blair roll her eyes. "Well, so far there's only been one rant about how much she regrets not knowing about me when I was a little girl because if she'd raised me I never would have fallen for you."

"Did you tell the head witch that she's wrong as usual?"

"You don't know that," said Blair. "If we hadn't both been so pathetic that day we met in Rodi's, if all those pathetic, awful things hadn't happened to us to make us who we were right at that moment—"

"No way," Todd corrected. "It was always going to be you and me no matter wh—"

In unison, their phones beeped angrily. One use per phone, and one quick use per phone. Just like that, they were cut off.

Todd was alone with the music again.

He lay on the bed and pretended that there was an icicle's chance in hell that he'd ever be able to fall asleep.

_Oh life, it's bigger  
It's bigger than you  
And you are not me  
The lengths that I will go to  
The distance in your eyes  
Oh no, I've said too much  
I've said enough…_


	2. Losing My Religion

_That's me in the spotlight  
Losing my religion  
Trying to keep up with you..._

"Kappa Alpha Delta," said Kevin, all business, like he was the receptionist at his parents' newspaper or his grandfather's oil-soaked corporation instead of standing in a frat house getting ready for the biggest party of the year. (The last party of Todd's life before Peter Manning threw him in a dungeon or, worse, community college.)

_And I don't know if I can do it..._

"Yes, Sir, he's right here." Kevin held out the phone to Todd. "It's your dad."

As if it could have been anyone else. "Oh, no, no, no." Todd backed away. "Tell him I died of some really rare disease."

If it had been Powell or Zach, they would have done it. Zach at least would have lied automatically; he never would have admitted that Todd was there to begin with. Powell probably have told Peter that Todd was there, and then lamely claimed to be mistaken. His father would have seen through it, but what did Todd care? He was a dead man walking anyway.

But it wasn't Powell or Zach, it was Kevin, and Kevin held out the phone and gestured like there was nothing that could be done. The worst thing Kevin's parents had ever done to him was probably forgetting to kiss his teddy bear goodnight when they tucked him into bed.

"Thanks," Todd mouthed sarcastically at Kevin. Kevin drifted toward the couch with the air of a man who thought he'd done a good deed. Todd clenched his fist around the receiver, hoping against hope that he would crush it into smithereens before he could catch his breath. He failed at that. He failed at everything.

"Hi, Dad, I-"

There was no need to say more. Peter Manning didn't need an invitation to pick up right where he'd left off the last time they'd spoken, in mid-rant.

"Since you obviously don't care about your education or your football team or anything other than getting drunk and pawing girls stupid enough to be impressed with the designer clothes I paid for, there is absolutely no reason for you to be anywhere but your bedroom at my house. A little boy's room for a little boy. At least you'll cost me less money that way. Fly home tonight."

Todd's stomach lurched and his breath caught in his throat. Listening to his father's complaints over a telephone line that stretched 750 miles from Chicago to Llanview was bad enough. Being in the same room was a sickening prospect. "What? No- Sir, I don't think I can fly home right away."

"And why is that?"

Todd was too unnerved to try anything but the truth. "Well, because I was planning on going down to Fort Lauderdale for a couple of days." He sent up a mental prayer that maybe Peter would remember that he hated Todd and that time away from Todd was always better than time with Todd.

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?"

"Why not? Are you really asking me why not? Let's count the reasons very slowly. You're a loser, you're a failure, you're a disgrace, you're stupid- is that too many reasons for you? Can't count that high, and that's why you flunked your math final when you knew everything in your future was contingent upon it? Did you forget that little detail? Is that why you think I would even consider letting you go gallivanting off to Fort Lauderdale on my dime?"

"Yeah, I know I flunked my calc final. How could I forget? You remind me, like, every day."

"And the one thing you showed the slightest hint of aptitude for is gone, too. Did I hear the dean correctly when I spoke to him this morning? You're officially off the team?"

"Yeah," Todd admitted, because it was the kind of thing that was so much fun to say aloud over and over, more real every time. "Yeah, that's what he said. He said no football next season."

"All because you couldn't be bothered to try to pass one measly exam."

"I did try. I tried like hell!" The taste of ashes filled his mouth. He had tried. He had stayed up all night studying for the first time in his life. He and Marty had done problem after problem. She had quizzed him on formula after formula. He had come so unbelievably close... a 64 rather than the 66 he needed.

He wasn't as stupid as his father thought he was.

He was stupider.

His back was to Kevin, but he could feel Kevin watching him with sympathetic, concerned eyes. Maybe now Kevin realized what he'd let Todd in for. It was too bad that with all of Kevin's social graces, the little prince didn't have the grace to go away.

"... And you still think I'm about to shell out for first class tickets to Florida?" asked Peter with a disbelieving laugh.

"I don't care about that. I'll take the-"

"You don't deserve to be shipped to Fort Lauderdale in the back of a garbage truck. The garbage would complain of cruel and unusual treatment, and it would be right!"

"Well if you feel like I don't deserve it-"

"Thank you very much. I do feel that way."

"Well, maybe I feel like you should give me the benefit of the doubt just once instead of making me feel like I'm this total loser."

"You don't need me to make you feel like a loser. You made yourself a loser all by yourself, Todd."

"I'm sorry that you feel that way." Todd's phone manners could be just as polite as Kevin's.

"If you are not here by tomorrow morning, I will personally come down there and drag you home by your overlarge ears. I promise you, Todd, you do not want that."

Peter's voice was pure finality. There was nothing left to do but agree. "Okay, all right. Yes, Sir. I'll be on the next-"

The click of the phone echoed in his ear. His father had hung up.

_I thought that I heard you laughing  
I thought that I heard you sing  
I think I thought I saw you try..._

Kevin's hands were warm on Todd's shoulders. "You all right?"

His first impulse was to punch Kevin for having the nerve to set up the whole scolding, sit there eating popcorn while listening to the show, and then ask if Todd was all right, like they were friends or something.

His second impulse was to punch himself for wishing that just once Peter Manning would ask Todd if he was all right and mean it.

He pushed the rage down and stood up without looking at Kevin. "Weren't you listening in? I just bought a one way ticket back home to parental hell."

He left then. He would have his last hurrah. He would have his revenge. But not on Kevin, no, not on the soft spoiled little prince who was too pampered to know better. He would save everything for Marty Saybrooke.

It got harder and harder to keep his cool as the preparations for the party dragged on.

He pretended that it was funny when a blowup doll appeared with the announcement that she was just airheaded enough for Todd. It sounded like something Peter Manning would say.

_Airhead. Stupid. Loser._

After that, Todd grabbed a marker and wrote loser above his picture on the frat house wall. It was better that he did it before someone else got the chance.

Powell and Zach materialized from nowhere. In the frat house, they were all on top of each other all the time. In better days, Todd had liked it. It was always full and loud, where it had been empty and quiet in the Manning house after Peter had driven Bitsy away (except when Peter was on a tear, of course). There was no suspense in a frat house, no waiting for the next blow.

At the moment, Todd hated it. He hated everything. He bit down the urge to punch Zach. He was saving it for Marty, he reminded himself. Marty was the one who'd made sure he flunked the calc exam. This was all Marty's fault.

He still grimaced when he felt Zach's hand on his shoulder through his thick cable knit sweater. It had been bad enough when Kevin- the guy who actually had a "this is your brain on drugs" poster in his bedroom- had tried to play the pitying, compassionate friend. It was worse when it came from Zach. Even Todd realized that Zach was an amoral sociopath. That was what Todd liked about Zach, actually. That and the periodic bursts of sycophantic behavior.

"Hey, Todd, come on, give us a hand with the wings, all right?"

Take the exam. Come home. Give us a hand with the wings. Todd was tired of the demands that came from every direction. And in that moment it occurred to him that he wasn't going to answer to anyone, anymore. His voice was mellow when he spoke. "No, you see, I don't take orders from you. I don't take orders from my old man, either. I ain't going home tonight. I've decided. This condemned man has one more night to party."

He reached for his beer. The beer was, finally, starting to help. It helped with everything but the unfairness of Marty getting away with her plan to get Todd expelled. All because he hadn't cuddled her needy ass after their roll in the hay. Like she hadn't known it was a booty call. Like she hadn't initiated it. Like she hadn't done the same thing with half the male population of L. U. But, of course, Todd was the one who had to pay.

"I only wish Marty Saybrooke could be here so I could show her my appreciation for all she's done for me. Not only did she help me flunk, not only am I off the football team, but I am this close to being expelled, and it's all because of that stuck up slut," he mused.

He wasn't so drunk that he missed Zach cutting his eyes to Powell like the two of them were deciding how to handle poor, crazed, irrational, delicate Todd.

"Todd, Marty didn't exactly keep you from studying all semester, did she?" tried Powell, the one who had never had an original thought in his life. He'd been talking either to Kevin or to Marty herself, Todd just knew it. Or maybe he'd been chatting with Peter. Everything was always Todd's fault to Peter; why not to Kevin, Powell, and Marty, as well?

"What do you mean? Are you saying this is my fault?" Todd lunged at Powell.

Powell, never one to stand his ground, backed up like the easily swayed coward he was. "I'm not saying it's anyone's fault-"

"You calling me a liar?" Todd demanded.

Zach ended the conversation. "Why're you trying to argue with him when he's hammered?" Zach asked Powell. Todd didn't bother to correct that he wasn't nearly hammered enough.

"He's starting to scare me," said Powell. Since Powell was scared of his own damn shadow, Todd let that slide, too. He needed another beer. The party had almost arrived. It was time to change into their ridiculous matching KAD shirts and turn up the music.

_Red red wine  
Goes to my head  
Makes me forget..._

Todd didn't know about red wine, but beer didn't make him forget. How could he forget, with his father calling every five minutes to demand that Todd's frat brothers confirm that Todd was on a plan to Chicago? How could he forget, when Marty still had to pay for ruining Todd's life?

"Marty isn't coming," Powell repeated.

But Todd knew Marty. He knew girls like Marty. He knew what Marty would do just as surely as he knew what she had done. "She'll be here. This is her scene. She can't help but be drawn to a place like this. She'll be here. Like a moth to a flame."

An hour passed.

No Marty.

And far too many comedians.

"So, Todd, how come you can read the chicken scratch Coach lays out for you but you can't pass a lousy calculus final?" joked one of his teammates.

"We'll miss you on the football team next year, Todd. Too bad you couldn't make the grade," chirped Emily, who was about the sluttiest girl at L.U. other than Marty.

"I can make it where it counts," he told Emily. "Dance with me."

"No." She yelled and shrieked and backed away.

Everyone knew that Todd was a loser now, and no one wanted him.

That was when Marty came in.

Drunkenly, the first thing Todd noticed was the black ribbon around her throat. A choker, it was called. How apt. Choking was exactly what Marty needed.

"There she is," Todd told Zach. "The woman who ruined my whole entire life."

"Whole entire? That's redundant." Zach laughed drunkenly. "How'd you do on your English final?"

Todd flicked his fingers in Zach's face for form's sake only. Suddenly the jokes didn't seem so bad. A happy warmth spread through him. Marty was here. He would get his revenge. The slut would be the butt of the jokes, not Todd. "I knew it. I knew she'd be here! She just can't say no to partying. I'm gonna show her just how much it costs to party at Kappa Alpha Delta."

He could turn it around. He rescued Dolly from one of the upstairs bedrooms and brought her down to the milling throng below. "This is Marty," he re-christened her for all to hear. "She put out for me, she'll put out for all of you."

Todd glared at Marty. But Marty didn't turn back into that needy, quivering mess who had begged him to hold her, just for a minute. She squared her shoulders and stuck out her jaw. She grabbed the doll and took center stage for herself. "Everybody, look! Todd's finally found the perfect date! Whaddya think? She doesn't take much money to entertain, she doesn't eat much, and she's his intellectual equal!"

Naturally, she got a round of applause.

And then Kevin dragged Marty off to dance, like this was a party, and Todd was left to fume.

But Marty wasn't going to leave Todd alone, no, she was just as set on destroying him as he was on destroying her. "I hope you're better at chugging beer than you are at calculus," she yelled to the room.

"Try me," said Todd. He didn't have football anymore, thanks to Marty, but he was still good at drinking.

"That's the idea," said Marty.

The whole party cheered for her.

The whole party joined in her victory dance.

Everyone was glad she'd taken everything from Todd.

Powell and Zach ran to dance with her. "What're you guys doing with a moron like Todd?" she asked them. She had him all but expelled; she had his reputation and his dignity; and now she was coming for his brothers. He moved angrily to intercede. "Excuse me, this is a private affair," dictated Marty. "Why don't you go hang out with the pump up doll? You guys got an awful lot in common. Air on the inside and plastic on the outside."

"Yeah?" he asked. That should have been enough to threaten her and put her on guard.

"Yeah."

"Shut up!" he snarled. As many times as he'd heard the Todd-is-an-airhead joke tonight alone, he should have been able to say something clever, but...

"That's a snappy comeback. No wonder you're flunking out."

"I'm sick and tired of you busting my chops every time I turn around." All that seemed to be coming out of his mouth was honesty.

"Then don't turn around," Marty directed with giggling drunken confidence.

"Where do you get off acting like you're the center of the universe? You know something? You ain't no better than anybody else. You ain't nothing but a stupid, stuck up little slut!"

Of course, if Todd was going to stand up for himself or point out something that was absolutely true, Kevin had to come running to protect Marty. "Hey, Todd. Back off, all right? Now." He turned to the others. "Powell, Zach, take him outside. Let him cool down a little."

So Todd was escorted away, the bad little boy who couldn't pass a calc test or stay on the football team or win a drinking contest or or get a girl to dance with him keep up with the town's drunk slut. Said drunk slut was now busily dancing on a table to the pleasure of her many admirers.

"Look at that."

"Come on, Todd," Powell tried to appease, on Kevin's orders.

"No, man. If you're gonna drag somebody away, you drag away Marty Saybrooke."

"Can you forget about Marty for one minute?" tried Zach, probably more because he was bored than because he enjoyed jumping at Kevin's command.

"She twists everything around and makes it look like it's my fault. No way am I gonna forget about that. I'm gonna see that bimbo take a major tumble."

And with that, Kevin removed Marty from the table and started to take her up the stairs to his room. Kevin, who already had the perfect family and the perfect life and the perfect girlfriend. (Okay, Todd would allow that Rachel was snobby and judgmental and had a permanent stick up her ass. If Rachel were Todd's girlfriend, he'd cheat on her too. But Kevin seemed to like her, at least when he wasn't pining after his LeeAnn.)

"I can't believe he's up there with her, alone!"

"What do you think Kevin said to her?" Zach wondered.

"I think it's something that she said to him." Todd knew how Marty worked.

"Kevin was doing all the talking. All the way upstairs. Marty Saybrooke, man. I didn't think he had it in him."

"Kevin Buchanan's gonna get something that I couldn't get." Kevin Buchanan had everything Todd would never get. Giving Marty a pounding after what she'd done to Todd was just unbrotherly, especially when Kevin had been so damn pitying that afternoon. Pretending like he cared. Pretending like he wasn't just in league with Peter and Marty and the Dean and everyone else who liked to make Todd the butt of all of the jokes because Todd was stupid. Todd would show them stupid.

"I think that's pretty much out of your hands now, Todd," said Powell, the unimaginative one.

"Like hell it is."

"What're you gonna do about it?" asked Zach.

"I don't know for sure, but I'm gonna do something."

_Cause I want somebody to shove  
I need somebody to shove  
I want somebody to shove me..._

Todd stared after Kevin and Marty, willing the staircase to give him inspiration. He'd lied to Zach. He already knew what he was going to do. Marty was drunk, even by Marty standards, and she was already in a bedroom. Without a roomful of defenders, it would be easy enough to remind her who was in charge. He'd take her right back to that quivering mess who had begged him to hold her "not for the whole night, just for a little while." He'd remind her what it was like to be the one no one wanted.

He could overpower Kevin. That was no problem. If everything was lost, including all hope of using Kevin's connections to make some kind of comfortable life after the graduation that wasn't going to happen, what did it matter if he smashed Kevin's self-righteous brains in?

No, better. Kevin was the president of the fraternity (how that had happened, Todd wasn't sure). He was taking the fraternity's reputation and the party very seriously. Kevin would leave Marty high and dry (or wet) in his bed if his presidential duties called. Then Todd would take his place. He'd bring Powell and Zach along as witnesses. Hell, he'd give Powell and Zach a turn when he was done.

Marty might chirp about her newfound popularity in public, but she wouldn't say a word about Todd and his buddies, no, she wouldn't. She wouldn't want anyone to think she was a slut. She wouldn't want anyone to know he'd left her crying and begging again. She'd be cowed and quiet, just like Carol Swift.  
_  
You're a dream for insomniacs, prize in the Cracker Jacks  
All the difference in the world is just a call away_

And I'm waiting by the phone  
Waiting for you to call me up and tell me I'm not alone

He began to push his way through the crowd to the stairs, and that was when he slammed into her.

He'd had all the rejection he could take that day, but every fiber of his being drunkenly screamed that he was not going to pass up the chance to talk to this woman. He hadn't seen her before, and he would have remembered. She was more beautiful than any of the other women in the packed house of gyrating flesh. She made Marty look like a broken down whore who'd been ridden hard and put away wet.

"Sorry," he said, even though he wasn't. He stepped back as much as he could, which wasn't much. The party was in full swing. There were bodies everywhere.

"You can make it up," she told him. "Dance with me."

It was the perfect camouflage. He kept one eye on the stairs, waiting for Kevin to come down and leave Marty unguarded. He kept his other eye on his inexplicably hot dance partner.

"What's your name?" he yelled at her over the roar of the crowd and the music.

"Blair."


	3. Give it Away Now

When Kevin stomped down the stairs and out the front door, Todd knew that it was time to put his plan in action. Marty was alone in Kevin's room-drunk, defenseless, and ready to be taught a lesson. Zach was coming toward them, and Todd lunged to grab him and tell him that they were going to bring the party back to the Party Girl.

Zach intercepted Todd's hand and put a fresh bottle of beer in it. He handed another bottle to Blair. "Nice," he told Todd with a broad wink as he ran his eyes over Blair.

Blair took a drink. Todd watched her lips on the mouth of the bottle and forgot about his plan just long enough to let Zach vanish back into the depth of the party.

"He your wingman?" asked Blair, more amused than offended by Zach's unhidden commentary on the situation.

"Yeah. I guess." Todd had been getting less and less articulate as the night went on, and being presented with a gorgeous woman who knew how to drink and take a joke and who looked interested in him was more than his addled brain could comprehend.

"He's good at it," said Blair judiciously.

They were unceremoniously backed toward the corner of the room. Some of the partiers had left off dancing in favor of chicken fights, and the rest were cheering them on. They looked ridiculous. Todd almost wanted President Kevin to come back in and scold them for being idiots, tell them that you could get your neck broken doing that.

The girl on Davy's shoulders gave the girl on Powell's shoulders a hard shove, and Powell and his girl went tumbling onto the couch together.

Hmm. Well, Todd wouldn't have objected to that part of the game. But he wouldn't have lost, so he wouldn't have gotten to that point.

"Powell's footwork sucks," Todd told Blair.

"Like you could do better?" she challenged.

"Best defensive back on the Lions," he told her. Then he felt sick. It wasn't true anymore. It wasn't true, and it was Marty's fault, and he should have taken his revenge on her when he'd had the chance.

"All right!" Blair yelled at the preening victors. "We got next!"

"No way!" Todd jerked Blair back toward him. He didn't know when she'd taken his hand. He didn't necessarily mind; he just wasn't the kind of guy who went in for chicken fighting in the middle of a party. Or anywhere.

"Todd." Zach was in his ear again. "When a pretty lady says she wants to wrap her legs around your neck, you always say yes. I don't know if we can be brothers anymore if you don't do this."

Todd wasn't concerned about the state of his brotherhood with Zach, but he did have to concede that Zach had made a fair point.

"She's too tall, anyway," Emily bubbled up. "The person on top in a chicken fight can't be heavy. The person on the bottom can't move that way."

The double insult to Todd's strength and his new friend's looks did it. He squatted down so Blair could get on his shoulders. The floor shook with the beat of the music.  
_  
I'm a low brow but I rock a little know how  
No time for the piggies or the hoosegow..._

"The idiot's right about one thing," he warned Blair. "You're gonna be up way higher than the others. We need to use that to our advantage. Don't mess around with them. You hit them fast and hard. I'm gonna get you at an angle so you can get a clean hit sideways, but you need to make it count because they're all gonna gang up on us if we can."

"Too bad Todd didn't put that much thought into his calc final," said someone, and Todd would have turned around and hit him for practice but Blair slipped her thighs over his shoulders and whatever blood was supposed to have made his fists clench rushed off to more exotic locales.

He walked Blair into the impromptu fighting ring. There were three other couples ready to start, and the defending champions called go.

_Give it away give it away give it away give it away now  
Give it away give it away give it away give it away now  
Give it away give it away give it away give it away now  
I can't tell if I'm a kingpin or a pauper..._

If there was one thing in the world Todd knew how to do, it was intercept another moving body and stop it from getting where it wanted to go. He went right at the champions first and hoped Blair was taking this seriously. She was the one who had wanted to do it, after all, so she'd better do it right. She'd better not be up to female tricks like Marty, building Todd up just to humiliate him in public.

Blair's thighs tensed around his neck and he lost his train of thought. By the time he regained it, the defending champions were sprawled on the floor. He crossed the room sideways, doing his best to maneuver so that the other two couples couldn't attack them at the same time.

With two more jerks, hard and fast, the other couples were on the floor.

Davy looked up at Todd, wounded and drunk. "It ain't that serious," he protested. "You trying to kill us?"

Someone produced a water gun and started shooting at Davy while Todd let Blair off his shoulders. Blair's eyes were wide. "You have some kind of pent-up aggression thing going on?" Todd asked. Blair didn't answer. "It's okay if you do. I could dig that," he assured her. He could dig everything about her, as long as she wasn't some plant Kevin had hired to keep him away from Marty. His blood stirred uncomfortably at the thought.

Kevin chose that moment to burst back into the party, summoned by Davy's continued protestations of his impending demise.

"Todd, what are you- Blair, what are you doing here?"

Todd clenched his fist. So Blair did know Kevin. Kevin had actually been so motivated to protect Marty that he had found another girl to distract Todd. Kevin and both of his girltoys would pay for this, and Todd didn't have much time left.

"You know him?" Todd asked Blair, hoping she heard the implied threat.

If she did hear the threat, she wasn't impressed. "My aunt used to be his... step-grandmother?"

Kevin handwaved the explanation. "You don't want to know. But I want to know what Blair is doing here."

"It's a party. I'm partying," mumbled Blair, not loudly enough to be heard over the music. Todd only heard her because she was still pressed against him.

"You," Kevin addressed the party at large. "Try to act like grownups. You," and he pointed at Blair, "come outside."

Blair rolled her eyes but followed obediently. Todd followed Blair. He certainly wasn't going to miss this.

The front porch was surprisingly quiet. No one was pissing or puking into the bushes yet, probably because they had all seen Kevin standing guard.

"Did you just tell a bunch of college kids at a fraternity party to act like grownups?" Blair asked Kevin.

"It's been a long day," Kevin told her. "I thought Cassie said that your aunt wanted you home tonight."

"Who's Cassie?" Todd demanded.

"My cousin," said Blair. "Kevin's had a crush on her since she used to baby-sit him."

"That's not the point," said Kevin.

"I found it interesting," said Todd.

"Blair," pleaded Kevin, and he looked so exhausted that Blair took pity on him.

"Aunt Dorian won't shut up about wanting me to go to grad school instead of staying here and starting my own company like I always wanted, so I decided to get back into the swing of school events by coming to your party. When you told Cassie and me about the party when we saw you at the store, it sounded like everyone was invited."

"All hot people are invited. So you're okay," Todd told her.

"So you just came here to tick off your aunt?" Kevin asked Blair.

"Yeah," said Blair. "That a problem?"

"No," said Kevin. "But you've done what you came to do, and the party will be wrapping up soon, and obviously you don't want to spend all night hanging around with some college boy you don't know..."

"College boy?" Todd echoed. He looked hard at Blair, which wasn't easy between the dark night and the amount of alcohol he had consumed. Obviously Kevin was trying to warn Blair off of him, but it was the way Kevin went about it that was interesting. "How old are you?"

Blair ran one manicured nail from Todd's temple down his cheek and along the line of his jaw. "Old enough to know better," she told him huskily.

At that moment, Todd threw away his plans for Marty once and for all. If this was his last night of freedom, he was going to spend it with Blair.

"There you go," Todd told Kevin. "The lady knows better, so you have nothing to worry about when she and I take a little walk and get to know each other."

"You can't take a walk in the middle of a thunderstorm," Kevin told them.

"Sure we can. We have an umbrella," said Blair brightly. She produced said umbrella from nowhere and handed it to Todd. He snapped it open and found that it was big enough to cover them both comfortably.

"Fine," said Kevin. "Blair, be careful. Todd's drunk and he's been in a mood all day. Todd, be careful. Blair's aunt is a psychopath who kills people who threaten her family."

Blair responded by flipping her long blonde hair over her shoulder and snuggling closer to Todd. They stepped together into the wet night.

"So your aunt," Todd said. "Is she really a psychopath?"

"Pretty much," said Blair. "But she's amazing and she loves me and I love her."

"What about your parents?"

"Not in the picture."

"So you're like Marty." He had sworn off Marty not two minutes before, but he couldn't help but notice the similarities. Marty and Blair were family friends of Kevin. Marty and Blair had no parents and were under guardianship of an aunt. Blair was even tall like Marty, with tons of long blonde hair.

But Todd had never heard Marty growl the way Blair did when she snatched the umbrella away and left him to get soaked.

"What's the big idea?" he yelled at her.

"Did you just compare me to Marty Saybrooke?" Blair hissed.

"I guess."

"That's the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me in my entire life. Members of Marty Saybrooke's fan club do not get to share my umbrella."

She turned on her heel and made for the parking lot down the street. Todd gave chase and grabbed the umbrella back. "Wait a damn minute," he told her. "If they ever made a Marty Saybrooke fan club, I'd be the last person to join. I was just going to give her what she deserved when you showed up and distracted me."

"Yeah?" Blair raised a curious eyebrow. "What is it that Miss Marty deserves?"

"To be put in her place. Humiliated. Sitting in her big mansion all by herself crying because no one can stand her and she can't stand herself because she's a bitch."

Suddenly the umbrella was back in his possession and Blair had looped her arm around his waist. "Tell me more," she cooed.

"You first. Why do you hate Marty?"

Blair scowled. "She tried to ruin Cassie's life."

"Your cousin."

"Yeah, but she's more like my sister. She always has been, ever since- well, ever since I came to Llanview to live with her parents. She could have been jealous or angry about her life being invaded by a little kid, but she wasn't. Not ever. And Marty... Marty just does whatever she wants and everyone ends up feeling sorry for her no matter how bad it was. It started with Andrew, okay? Andrew is Cassie's husband. He's a minister."

Todd snapped his fingers in recognition. "I heard something about this. She said he was molesting teenage boys."

"Right. But even after that, Andrew felt bad for Marty. He made her his reclamation project, because she had so much potential or whatever. So Marty started telling Cassie that Andrew didn't want her any more, that Andrew only wanted Marty. When Cassie and Andrew got married, Marty snuck into the bride's room and threatened Cassie. Then Marty went so hysterical that they had to drag her out of the wedding screaming. Because she had to take the most important day of Cassie's life and make it all about poor poor Marty, couldn't hook a man by trying to ruin his reputation and his career. It was pathetic."

"_She's_ pathetic," Todd agreed. It was nice to say that to someone who agreed.

"Your turn. You promised to tell me what you were going to do."

Todd looked at Blair, a beautiful woman walking through the park alone with a man she didn't really know in the middle of the night. Something told him that she wouldn't think his plan was such a good one even if she hated Marty almost as much as he did. "Well, what I already did, was, see, I needed help with my calc final so Powell got her to come tutor me. She was up in my room all night. Then I told this guy she was starting to date, Suede, that we weren't _studying_ in my room if you know what I mean."

Blair clapped her hands in glee. "Serves her right. Beat her at her own game. So Suede just believed you?"

"I had some of my frat brothers back me up. They really played it up, like they didn't want to tell Suede but if he was going to drag it out of them..."

"Perfect." Blair smiled a devilish smile, and the night's alcohol must have hit Todd harder than he'd thought, because he could have sworn that that was the instant the rain stopped.

"Not enough, though," Todd mumbled. "I didn't pass."

"She probably gave you the wrong formulas," said Blair.

"That's what I said!" Everything inside of Todd lept up at once. Finally, someone who not only believed his theory but came to the conclusion on her own. Finally, someone who didn't think Marty was a Goddamn saint and Todd was lucky that she'd even tried to help him.

"I wouldn't put it past her at all." Todd couldn't help but notice that Blair was hot when she was angry. He was getting the idea that she was hot pretty much all the time. Blair patted Todd's arm like he had been wronged- which he had, he reminded himself. He leaned just slightly into her touch. "Was it an important test?"

"It's why I'm on academic probation. They're talking about expulsion. They're talking about summer school. Summer school! Would you ever go to summer school?"

"It wasn't that bad," she said quietly. She wandered over to a park bench and made to sit on it. Todd stopped her and shucked off his KAD sweatshirt, then used it to towel off the bench. The rain might have stopped, but the puddles remained.

"Thanks," said Blair. "I wasn't thinking. This isn't something I talk about much."

"Summer school? Your aunt's a hardass about grades?"

"No. I mean, she can be but that wasn't what it was about. I was eleven when I came here and I could barely read. When I was in the orphanage... there are too many kids and they can't pay a lot of attention, especially to the quiet ones. I used to daydream all the time. I'd dream and I'd get so into that fantasy that I'd give myself a migraine. They thought I was special needs. Once you've been written off, the teachers and the social workers, even the good ones, give everything to the ones they think they can save. Once Aunt Dorian knew for sure I wasn't special needs, she wanted to give me everything I needed to catch up. I spent that whole summer with a tutor. But the next fall I was back in class with the kids my own age. It was worth it."

"It wasn't your fault, though," Todd said.

"It's not your fault Marty sabotaged you."

Todd didn't know what to think about that. "What did you dream about?" he asked instead. "When you were in the orphanage?"

"Well..." she drew the word out, obviously deciding how much to tell him. "I used to have this dream that this handsome man would one day come to the orphanage and give me this key, this golden key. And he'd say 'Blair, I'm gonna unlock all the doors for you.' And then he wouldn't just end up being my father, he'd end up being the king, too."

"And that would make you a princess." What was it with chicks and their princess fantasies?

"Yes it would. That's me."

"Nice fantasy. Somehow I don't think my life's gonna wind up being such a fairy tale."

Blair refused to be embarrassed. "You didn't have any silly dreams when you were a kid?"

"Not allowed in Peter Manning's house." Todd sat up straight. "Don't be a dreamer, be a doer," he quoted.

"And your mom?"

"She's dead," Todd admitted bluntly. He had long been in the habit of saying 'my parents' this or 'my parents' that. None of his frat brothers actually knew that he didn't have a mother. Poor little half-orphan didn't fit the image he wanted to project. But the day had been so long, and Blair was someone he didn't have any real expectation of seeing again. Who knew why a park bench in the middle of the night demanded honesty?

"I'm sorry," said Blair.

"I didn't see her for a long time before she died. The divorce wasn't pretty."

"Are they ever?"

"Probably in Kevin's family they are."

Blair shook her head. "They're more of a mess than they like people to think."

Todd couldn't help laughing. He didn't have to worry about anyone finding out how much of a mess he was. His mess was so deep and so bad that no one would understand it even if they knew. A change of subject was in order. "So what's the business that you want to start that your aunt thinks is a bad idea?"

"She doesn't think it's a bad idea. She thinks it's a good idea- which it is. It's just that when she gets a picture in her mind about how things should be, she doesn't always adjust to how things really are."

"So what is it?"

"I'm going to call it Melador, after my mama and her sisters. Aunt Melinda and Aunt Dorian, and mama is Addie."

"So you have a good name. You have a good business plan?" he challenged.

By the time she got done answering, he was almost ready to ask her for a job and a few hints of gray sunlight were peeking into the park.

"I have to get home," Blair said. "There's irritating Aunt Dorian, and then there's terrifying her. I don't want to do that."

Todd swallowed his sigh. Even if he'd had a home to go to, he wouldn't have wanted the night to end. This was the best night he had ever spent with a woman that hadn't involved sex. (A tiny voice at the back of his brain suggested that it had been better than most if not all of the nights that had involved sex, but he told it to shut up and not act like a girl.)

"You left your car at KAD," he told her. "I'll walk you back."

"Okay."

"And we can stop in at the house and I'll show you my room," he added, because it was always worth a try.

Blair flipped her eyes at him in a been-there-seen-that way, but didn't answer.

"I can buy you breakfast, though, right?"

"The only place that's open this early is McDonald's."

He took issue with the distaste in her voice. "Egg McMuffins are the hangover cure of champions."

"Then maybe you better save them all for yourself and your frat brothers."

It wasn't a terrible idea. If he walked in the door with a bag of greasy hangover food, he would be the conquering hero and Kevin wouldn't be able to bitch at him that he should help clean up the mess. There was no way that Todd was going to help clean up the mess.

Blair veered off toward the parking lot, walking too fast for Todd's taste. She barely called a "good luck" to him over her shoulder before vanishing.

The night should have ended with more ceremony. He shoved half of an Egg McMuffin in his mouth and swallowed it without chewing.


	4. The Morning After Nothing

Zach was passed out on the couch; most of the other brothers were scattered around the room. Kevin was missing, and so was Powell; probably they'd gone to meet Kevin's mother like the good little boys that they were.

Todd grinned and waved a breakfast sandwich under Zach's nose, prepared to jump out of the way if Zach hurled all over the floor.

"What?" Zach mumbled without opening his eyes. He swatted his hand aimlessly in front of his face before finally sitting bolt upright. He squinted at Todd like the light hurt his eyes. "What are you doing?"

"Hangover cure," said Todd. "But if you're not man enough for it-"

Zach grabbed the sandwich and, looking green, crammed it into his face.

Todd laughed. He just couldn't be in a bad mood.

"What the hell?" asked Zach around large bites of egg and cheese. "I guess you had a good time last night."

"Best Spring Fling ever," said Todd.

"Gotta hand it to you," said Zach. "She was hot. She feel as good as she looked?"

"A gentleman never tells," said Todd primly, neatly getting out of admitting that nothing had actually happened.

"What the-"

Heavy footsteps came thundering down the stairs. "Thank God, Todd, you're back." Powell grabbed Todd by both shoulders, and Todd wanted to back away. Whatever Powell wanted with Todd, there was no way his eyes should have been quite that frantic.

"You are way too keyed up for the morning after the biggest party of the year," observed Todd needlessly. "If that didn't relax you, I don't know what will."

"The dean has been calling all morning. Last night, too. He wants to see you, and he wants to see you yesterday."

Todd shrugged. "What's he gonna do? Put me on probation and take me off the football team? They did that already."

"They could expel you."

"Not any worse than what already happened," said Todd.

"They could want to tell you you passed the calc exam after all," said Zach. He shoved the bag of food at Powell. "Have some. You'll be more optimistic."

Powell pointed at the door. "Go!" he ordered Todd.

Since it was the dean's office or a plane to Chicago, Todd went.

The dean's office was in an old-fashioned building in the middle of campus. There were a few small classrooms on the first floor; they, like everything else on campus, were quiet and dark. Todd loped up the ornate staircase and proceeded straight to the receptionist's desk. "Todd Manning," he told her, and she started to babble about how relieved the dean would be that he'd finally turned up. Thirty seconds later, Todd was seated in an enormous chair looking across an enormous desk at the dean.

"I was afraid you'd already left," the dean said. "Many of the underclassmen have."

"I almost did. Dad isn't too happy about that calc exam, as you can imagine." Todd did everything he could to look helpless, innocent, and obedient.

The dean smiled benevolently. "But your father was quite happy to learn that your grade has been reevaluated when I spoke to him last night. He even mentioned something about a new car."

Todd's heart was in his throat. He had hoped that Coach would get the dean or the president or the board of trustees or someone to lean on Professor Nader, but he'd thought that the time for that had passed. "Re-evaluated how?" he asked.

"You got a C. That keeps you off of academic probation and on the football team, which is exactly where all of us want to see you."

"I asked Professor Nader and he said that that wouldn't happen," said Todd. He knew he should have left well enough alone, but he couldn't help but be curious about what had gone down.

"Then we're lucky he changed his mind," said the dean noncommittally. "But, Todd, his concerns about your attendance and your comprehension of the material are legitimate. We all understand that there is an extra level of pressure on our student-athletes and that you should have been advised against taking such a difficult course to begin with. But it might be an appropriate gesture if you were willing to consider summer school."

The day before, Todd would have politely replied that such a thing was impossible because he already had plans. (He would not have mentioned that those plans involved beer and Fort Lauderdale.) The day before, Todd would have been too busy seething at the implication that he was too dumb to have been taking calculus in the first place to even consider the option of taking yet more classes. Today, he knew how very close his life had come to making an abrupt and bizarre turn. Today, he knew that Blair would be in Llanview this summer and that this would give him a chance to see her again without coming off as a stalker.

"I guess I could do summer school a little," he told the dean, and was rewarded when the man stammered with surprise and thrust a packet of forms and pamphlets into Todd's hand.

Todd ran down the stairs even more quickly than he'd run up them. He ran the rest of the way back to KAD and flung open the door. Unsurprisingly, Powell was cleaning up the mess the party had left. Zach was slouched in a chair perusing the latest Playboy.

"Fellas, you're never gonna believe this!"

Powell snapped to nervous attention. "What'd the dean want?"

"Remember the calc final, the one that got me kicked off the football team for next semester? The F that shook the world?"

"Yeah," drawled Zach, standing up, magazine abandoned.

"Presto changeo. It's a C." A smile spread across Todd's face. It was more real now that he was telling Powell and Zach.

"You passed!" Zach high-fived Todd.

"How'd that happen?" Powell wanted to know.

"I don't know. As far as I can tell, the coach must've gone to Professor Nader and put his hand around his neck and said real calm, real soft, that I was the best defensive back on the team and that if he didn't reassess my grade, bad things might happen."

"No, no, no. You know what probably happened. The coach probably talked to the administration, and they put the pressure on Nader, man." Zach clasped Todd's hand again. "The Llanview Lions smack attack is back!" Zach thrust his chest at Todd, and Todd knocked him laughing onto the couch.

Powell remained sullen, and in Todd's happiness he felt the tiniest twinge of regret for having scared him so badly the day before. "Hey." He punched Powell on the shoulder. "What's the matter, Powell? Ain't you happy for me?"

"Congratulations," said Powell flatly.

"What's up with you?"

Powell kept cleaning, so Todd and Zach left him to it and found a football and a few beers that had survived the previous night.

An hour later, Kevin drifted in. "Isn't it a little early in the day to start partying again, guys?" he asked, old woman that he was. It obviously ran in the family, Todd mused, watching Powell bury himself in a textbook.

"I dunno, Kev. If it were up to me, I'd party all day. I'd party all night. I'm invincible! Nothing is ever gonna get in my way!" He let out a primal scream at how good life was when it had been so bad twenty-four hours earlier. He updated Kevin on his meeting with the dean.

"Professor Nader raised your grade from an F to a C?" asked Kevin dubiously.

"It's amazing what a little extortion will do," Powell chimed in.

"Not only am I back on the football team next season, but my old man's gonna come through with the car. Come on," he clapped Powell on the shoulder. "Best party ever didn't cheer you up, breakfast didn't cheer you up, we'll try lunch. I'm buying."

"Big spender," said Zach. "McDonald's again?"

"Country Club. We'll put Powell back in his natural element."

"I'm meeting my mom and my sister there," said Kevin. "I'll give you a ride."

Kevin's sister Jessica was all of twelve years old, and while Kevin was still parking the car she dragged her mother over to say hello to 'Cousin Powell.' The kid actually addressed Powell that way, like 'Cousin' was some kind of royal title. Kevin and Powell's family belonged to another century.

"Hey, guys, here's Kevin's mom," came the quick, muttered warning. They all jumped to their feet, Kevin-worthy manners at the ready.

"Hello, Powell. Hi, Todd, Zach, how are you. You haven't by any chance seen Kevin?" asked Victoria Lord Buchanan with appropriate regality.

"We're meeting him for lunch, but he's late, as usual," piped up the cherub. Todd felt oddly inclined to like her. He'd never heard anyone criticize Kevin before, except for Rachel, and that didn't count because Rachel didn't like anyone but herself and maybe her parents.

"That's our fault," said Powell. "He gave us a ride over here and he's parking the car. We're sorry."

"No harm done." She turned the whole of her attention to Todd. Proper breeding had no doubt taught her to find something to say to each of her cousin's friends. "How was the Spring Fling party? Was it a big success?"

"Absolutely," Todd told her. Then he realized that this was an unexpected opportunity. "We got to meet an old friend of Kevin's. Blair..." And with horror, he discovered that he didn't even know her last name.

"Blair Cramer? Dorian's niece? I didn't even realize that she was back in town."

"Blair Cramer," Todd repeated, committing it to memory. "Apparently Blair wants to stay in Llanview and start up her own business and her aunt wants her to go to graduate school. From what Kevin says, it sounds like Blair's aunt usually gets what she wants."

With interest, Todd detected the slightest twitch of irritation under Mrs. Buchanan's composed mask of politeness. "Dorian and I have had our differences over the years, but I would never deny that she raised two lovely girls. Blair and Cassie both are wonderful young ladies."

Todd hadn't needed to be reminded about the lovely part.

"Cassie works for me at my newspaper, in fact," Mrs. Buchanan continued. "And Blair graduated with honors last year, so I don't doubt that Dorian wants to see her reach her full potential."

"There's Kevin," announced Jessica, putting an end to her mother's very interesting musings. Todd decided to forgive the kid since she was clearly just hungry.

"Pumping Kevin's mother for information about your babe from last night," said Zach as he plopped back into his seat. "Smooth."

"You have to take opportunities when they present themselves," said Todd, not bothering to deny it. He was rather impressed with himself.

"You got her into bed without even knowing her last name?"

"I never said anything about a bed. There may have been a park bench."

Zach whistled and high-fived Todd. Powell folded his arms across his chest.

"You don't approve of that, either, Powell?" asked Zach. "The lady was a consenting adult."

Todd shoved aside the irony. Not only had nothing happened for Blair to consent to, but he had almost done something to Marty that he knew for a fact she didn't want. Marty would have deserved it, but still...

The irony wouldn't be shoved. Blair's and Marty's faces flashed before his eyes in a dizzying spiral.

"I'm going to go find our waiter," said Todd, and he hurried toward the bar and away from Zach and Powell.

He wasn't the only one at the bar. The bartender was explaining to a small cluster of patrons that there had been a minor problem in the kitchen, but that it was resolved and the waiters would be out momentarily. "It won't affect your food at all," the bartender promised. "It's not that kind of situation. We're sorry. It won't happen again."

"I should hope not," grumbled various would-be diners, shrillest among them a red-haired, middle-aged woman. Todd turned to her with instinctive dislike, and that was when his eyes met Blair's.

He couldn't stop the goofy grin from spreading over his face. Of course she came here; perhaps they had even been in the same room before and he hadn't noticed her because he'd been thinking about football or Marty or KAD or something stupid.

"Hi, Todd," she said, green eyes impossibly wide.

She remembered his name. She was announcing to the world that she knew him. What a difference day made; yesterday, he'd been the joke of the party.

"Hi, Blair. How are you this morning?"

She drifted closer to him and he found himself lightheaded as the perfume-scented air moved around them. "Tired," she purred. "We were up all night after all."

The older woman- this must be the famous Aunt Dorian- rolled her eyes. "Really, Blair?"

"Todd is a student, Aunt Dorian. At least, only just got expelled yesterday. You wanted me to be a student, so I went to him so he could teach me what students do."

"You could have just told me that you felt that strongly about not going back to school right now."

"I did. You didn't hear me."

"Message received," Dorian snapped. "You will stay here and start your Melador, and I will support you in any way I can. Come along."

"In a minute."

Dorian raised an eyebrow.

"Really. Just a minute," Blair said, and Dorian left them alone after shooting a final glare at Todd.

"I'm sorry for using you to make a point to my aunt," she said.

Todd was sorry that she'd used him too. For fifteen wonderful hours, he'd thought that she was different. He'd thought that she wasn't like Carole, who'd called him a freak; or Marty, who'd turned on him; or Emily, who'd laughed at him. But she was just one more woman who thought he was a loser, a joke, stupid. His father had always told him to beware of women, and over and over he made the same mistake. Maybe he was just as dumb as they all said he was.

Damned if he'd let Blair know that. "Babe, you can use me any time you want," he told her. "As long as we go for someplace more comfortable than a park bench in the rain, if you know what I mean."

"That's not what I meant!" Her hand was warm on his arm and he wanted to shrug it off but couldn't bring himself to do it. "Last night was nice. I really like you. I went out to annoy Dorian, but I went with you because I wanted to."

"Whatever," he told her.

"It's just that this morning the timing was so perfect. It's not personal, you know. She hates every man who looks at Cassie or me."

"Even the minister?"

"Especially the minister. I really didn't want you to think- you're so young-"

Todd laughed. "Please. You're two years older than I am."

She eyed him critically.

"I have my sources," Todd told her.

"Two years is a lot when the woman's the older one. There are probably people in this room talking about how I'm a cradle robber right now."

"You care what they think?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Good."

"What about you? How soon do you have to see your father?"

He smirked. "Not this summer. They changed my grade. I'm not on probation and I'm still on the team."

"Todd, that's great!" To his complete and utter shock, she flung her arms around him in the tightest, most enthusiastic hug he'd ever had off the football field.  
_  
"Blair!" _her aunt's voice sang out. _"You're keeping us waiting!"_

Blair disentangled herself and scrambled across the room.

Zach, too, was gesturing that Todd needed to hurry back now that the waiter was at their table. Todd threw Zach an obscene gesture. He didn't like to hurry, not when his nether regions were suddenly hard and hot and tight.

No football hug had ever done _that_ to him.

Fifteen hours and ten minutes were all it had taken Blair Cramer to complicate the shit out of his life.


	5. The Night Before Nothing

They all objected to the end-of-term dinner at Kevin's mother's house. Powell objected because he was still sulking and sullen and didn't want to do anything other than go home to California. Zach objected because he firmly believed that any night not spent drinking was a waste. Todd objected on principle; he always objected to Kevin's plans.

Kevin didn't listen to any of them, and they all ended up in his cavernous ancestral home at 6:00 sharp. Todd presented the flowers to Mrs. Buchanan on the others' behalves and they made small talk about what a good job they'd heard little Jessie had done in the seventh grade play.

"So, what are you boys planning to do this summer?" Mrs. Buchanan asked them over the soup.

"My flight to California leaves tomorrow," said Powell.

"Todd and I are going to Fort Lauderdale," said Zach.

Todd shook his head. "I meant to tell you. You have to count me out of that one."

Zach's head snapped up in surprise. "You were the mastermind behind the whole thing!"

"I know. I wish I could," said Todd honestly. A beach party that never stopped was about as close a thing to heaven as Todd believed in. Now that he was saying out loud that he wasn't going, he started to regret his decision. A touch of the old anger boiled up inside of him:_ It's Marty's fault I'm not going. That bitch._

"But you passed the test. Your parents can't still be mad, can they? You said they were getting you a new car."

"No, they aren't mad." The lie, as usual, tasted sour on his tongue. He'd known Zach for two years but had never mentioned that his mother was long dead. "But I've decided to stay in Llanview this summer."

"And do what?" asked Kevin dubiously, as if Todd couldn't possibly capable of doing anything other than partying and he'd find a better summer party almost anywhere else.

"Summer school," Todd announced. He hadn't planned this, but he should have. He wouldn't have to listen to anyone's real thought on the subject, not with Mrs. Buchanan and her gravitas in the room. Hell, he could continue selling himself to Mrs. Buchanan as a well-mannered, responsible young man. She had the kind of connections that could give him a cushy, worry-free job as soon as he graduated. Even better, she moved in the same circles as Blair. The more his path crossed with Mrs. Buchanan, the more his path would cross with Blair.

Powell, Zach, and Kevin's mouths hung open in perfect fraternal unity.

"They would have expelled you otherwise?" Kevin asked at last.

Todd sat up a little straighter, the soul of contrition. "No, the dean gave me a choice. But I believe that I have responsibility to my family and my teammates and myself to take every advantage of my second chance. If spending a few months in summer school means my academic standing won't come down to one test again, then that's a sacrifice I felt I had a duty to make."

Zach's pretend manners were the equal of Todd's pretend manners, but this was too much for him. He snorted sarcastically and had to pretend to cough as a cover.

Mrs. Buchanan gave Zach an icy glare. "That's very mature of you, Todd," she said.

"Thank you," he answered, almost wishing he meant it.

"And since you'll still be here for the rest of the week, you can help me make sure KAD house is in condition for inspection before they lock it up for the summer," Kevin said smoothly. Todd swallowed his sneer. Kevin knew how to use his mother's presence, too. There would be no saying no and no going back on his word. It was something like signing an agreement in front of a notary public.

"Be glad to," said Todd.

"Where will you stay if they close up KAD house?" asked Powell, radiating anxiety.

"They aren't making him sleep on the street or anything," said Kevin.

"Although that might build character," chimed in Zach.

"They leave the two big dorms right in the middle of campus open," Todd explained.

Zach made a face. "The freshman slits? Sleeping on the street might be better."

"It looks like a dungeon in there," shuddered Powell. "All those concrete walls with hooks on them. If I were a freshman and I saw that place, I'd turn around and go home."

Ordinarily, Todd would have told Powell that that wasn't saying much because Powell was afraid of everything, up to and including pink bunny rabbits. This time he kept quiet because Mrs. Buchanan was there… and also because he didn't disagree. Something about the place turned his stomach. "I'm not looking forward to it," he admitted. "They should tear those dorms down, not keep them open for the summer."

"They'll never do that," said Powell. "Some famous architect designed them. He was going for 'modern collegiate gothic.'"

"If that means 'claustrophobic and ugly,' he got what he wanted."

"Are you gonna be okay there?"

Todd barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes. "I almost ended up on academic probation. I'll take my punishment like a man."

"Yeah, Powell," agreed Kevin. "He can think of it as extra training. He'll be extra violent for the team next year if they keep him in a cage all summer."

"Kevin, darling," Mrs. Buchanan, injected, "will you help me get the main course?"

Kevin stood up and followed his mother.

"Think he's in trouble?" asked Zach.

Todd grinned. "One way to find out." He gave Kevin and his mother a few seconds' head start and then followed them. He had only been to Llanfair once before, so it wouldn't be hard to claim that he'd been looking for the bathroom if they caught him eavesdropping.

Todd hovered beside the closed kitchen door and almost immediately heard his own name.

"… Would you like to invite your friend Todd to stay here for the summer?"

"Todd?" repeated Kevin in a tone that indicated that he believed his mother had taken leave of her senses.

"Well, yes. He's your friend, isn't he? You certainly spend enough time together."

"He's my brother," Kevin answered, like they all did, always, because that was the KAD way. Not for the first time, Todd wondered why Kevin had bothered to join a fraternity. He didn't need the connections and he certainly didn't need an ersatz family. He had a real one.

"He's taking such responsibility for that little setback he had," Mrs. Buchanan went on. "He might do better in his summer classes if he's in a more comfortable, more supportive environment." Unconsciously, Todd wrapped his arms around himself. Kevin didn't know what he had. He really didn't.

Kevin inhaled sharply. "The way Todd acts in front of you is not the way Todd acts at the frat house."

"I should certainly hope not. Everyone behaves differently in different situations. Or is it something more serious? You don't think he'd be a threat to Jessie or to-"

"No. Of course not."

"Then what?"

"It's more subtle than that." There was a clinking of plates; apparently they really were preparing to serve the main course. They must have sent the cook or the maid or whoever she was out so they could discuss Todd in private. "You see how Powell's been acting? Quiet, nervous, anxious?"

"He always was a sensitive child. I was surprised he was willing to come to school so far away from home."

"It's more than that. He idolizes Todd, and when Todd gets upset Powell picks up on it and it drives him crazy."

"But Todd doesn't seem upset. He appears to have made a genuinely mature decision."

"Yeah. That's not really like him," said Kevin. Todd growled in the back of his throat.

"It's hardly Todd's fault that Powell is so susceptible to his moods."

"I guess it's not."

"But if you aren't comfortable inviting him to stay, we won't. You don't need a reason."

Todd thought that that was going to be it, but then Kevin spoke again. "Why are you so interested in Todd?"

Mrs. Buchanan appeared to think about that. "I don't know, really," she mused at last. "He's your friend, of course, and I like to get to know your friends. But I'm drawn to him in a way I absolutely cannot explain."

"He's magnetic. He's got you _and_ Powell fascinated with him."

"And perhaps the pole of that particular magnet just happens to repel you instead."

Kevin sighed heavily. "No. I just—I just hadn't thought of inviting him to stay. Maybe you're right. Maybe it will help if he feels like someone cares. I was there when his father called after he failed that exam. I couldn't hear everything, but what I did hear was really bad. I can't ever imagine talking to Duke that way, no matter how bad he messed up…"

Todd backed away slowly. If he listened any longer, he would end up storming into the kitchen and strangling Kevin. First Kevin had forced Todd to talk to his father, then he had listened in, and now he was sharing with his mommy and whoever else would listen. Kevin had probably already told Powell and Zach everything. Todd looked at them out of the corner of his eye when he returned to the table and tried to read their minds to see what they knew about Peter Manning.

"I thought either all three of you got lost or they caught you spying and buried you in the backyard," said Zach conversationally.

"Nope." Todd busied himself rearranging his napkin on his lap. Whether Mrs. Buchanan ended up asking him to stay or not, he didn't want her to take one look at him and regret ever having thought about it. He had always been good at ingratiating himself to adults who didn't know better. It was people his own age who saw through him even if they couldn't always put the nature of his damage into words.

"So what were they talking about?" Zach prompted.

Todd gathered himself to tell the best kind of lie: the lie that was technically the truth. "They were talking about you, Powell," he said.

"Me?"

"They're worried because you seem so tense all the time. They're hoping you just need a vacation."

Zach and Powell seemed to accept that, and the rest of the dinner went smoothly. There was no mention of inviting Todd to stay, which was just as well; sharing a frat house with Kevin (not that Kevin usually spent the night) from September to May was quite enough.

Then, when Kevin drove them back to KAD, he said goodbye to Zach and Powell but announced that he wanted to talk to Todd. Todd's heart pounded mutinously in his chest. Somewhere along the line, ingratiating himself to the movers and shakers had stopped being a game and become a test. And Todd did not have a good record with tests lately.

"My mom and I were talking," said Kevin. Todd clenched his hand around the door handle. "We were thinking that since you're staying for the summer term and KAD house is going to be closed, you might like to stay with us instead of in the dorm."

"That's really nice of you and your family, Kevin."

"And?"

There was only one answer. "Yes. Thank you."

Kevin raised his eyebrows. "You must really want to avoid Powell's dungeon dorms. You know you can't throw parties and get drunk and bring home women in my mother's house."

Todd smiled in Kevin's face. "I'll be too busy to throw parties, I'll get drunk at Rodi's, and I'm swearing off the entire female population of L.U."

"Okay, then," said Kevin, and he was gone.


	6. Summer's End

The summer was over before Todd could blink.

In spite of his best plans, he had spent the long, hot months doing actual school work. Something about Kevin's house encouraged it, or perhaps it was something about Kevin's mother. Todd had been living there for a week or so when she told him that he was her guest and wouldn't he please call her "Viki." He slipped into the informality with unexpected ease. He had always known how to pass himself off as someone who belonged in the echelons of the rich and connected, but he had always known that he was a fraud.

Viki made him feel like the genuine article.

It was weird.

Three weeks into the summer term, a computer appeared on the desk in "his" bedroom. (The room was five times the size as his assigned dorm room on campus, which more than made up for it coming with a creepy portrait of Kevin's grandfather.) He had mentioned in passing that Professor West was one of the few instructors who was absolutely anal about everything being submitted on disk instead of on paper, but he hadn't expected anyone to do anything about it.

"That computer runs on the same platform as L.U., so there shouldn't be any problems," Viki told him casually when he stumbled over his thanks. "I'm surprised you don't already have your own."

"My dad's not the most forward-thinking guy," said Todd. "And I never asked for one." The choice between a computer and a car, or a computer and beer money, was no choice at all. "There's a computer lab at school and computers in KAD, and most of the professors don't care if you turn stuff in written by hand." He decided not to mention that he didn't usually turn in assignments, anyway, because that would have required actually doing them.

Viki nodded. "There's always a temptation to keep doing things the way we've always done them. I think that that's a particular problem in the newspaper business. My father was a great innovator, and I'm often concerned that I don't have his gifts in that regard."

"If your father had any talents that you don't- and I really doubt that he did- you make up for it by being this person who brings home a computer to make summer school easier for your son's fraternity brother. If something like that occurs to you, the really important stuff would just have to."

She smiled at him as if the compliment meant something. "Professor West and I have known each other for many years." Of course they had. "He writes editorials for The Banner quite frequently, in fact." Of course he did. "I'd be interested to see some of the assignments you're writing for his class, if you're comfortable sharing, that is."

The thought of giving his work to Viki for approval was far more intimidating than the thought of giving it to a professor who saw thousands of student essays every year and sneered at them all.

And when Viki started telling him that he had a very real talent for writing, he wondered whether he had been the victim of an elaborate practical joke. He couldn't remember that last time anyone had thought he was good at anything other than football or partying.

His visits to Rodi's grew fewer and fewer, and so were Blair's, so fixated was she on her Melador. At the end of the summer term, Todd went ten days in a row without seeing Blair or the inside of a bar.

His unintended ten-day streak ended abruptly when there was a tapping at his bedroom window. He looked hard at the portrait of Victor Lord, half-convinced it was responsible. There was something sinister about that man, even if his daughter and grandchildren were downright nice most of the time.

"Who's there?" he asked, not too loud, because he didn't want anyone to overhear and think he was crazy.

"Blair."

"Blair?" he repeated, disbelieving. He shoved Viki's tacky curtains aside. Sure enough, there was Blair on the narrow balcony that ran alongside his window. He couldn't take his eyes off of her. He was going to have a new fantasy after this, yes he was. It was a failing on his part that it hadn't occurred to him to imagine Blair- or another hot chick, in his pre-Blair years- climbing in his window.

"You gonna let me in?" she asked when he'd been staring at her longer than he'd intended.

He shook his head to clear out the dirty thoughts that had invaded. Not all of the dirty thoughts, of course. But enough dirty thoughts that he was able to function. Belatedly, he reached for Blair's hand to help her inside. Instead of taking his hand, she thrust a six pack of Heineken at him and climbed through on her own.

"You could have come in through the front door, you know," Todd told her as she plopped herself down on his bed.

Blair mock-gasped. "Dorian Cramer Lord's niece be allowed into Victoria Lord Buchanan's house? Never! They'd have to burn this place down if they knew I was here. They're like the Hatfields and the McCoys."

Todd laughed. He knew that there was some truth to that, although he didn't know the details. "Viki likes you," he defended. "She thinks you're a lovely girl."

"Did she say that before or after you started calling her _Viki_?"

"I know. Weird, Right?"

"She must like you a lot."

"I like her." It suddenly occurred to Todd that Blair was the only person he knew he could talk to about this. "It's strange. I thought she would be this uptight, inbred, prissy, blue blooded pillar of society who was completely out of touch with reality."

"Sounds about right," said Blair, tongue firmly in cheek.

"But now I think she's only mostly out of touch with reality."

"I'll tell Aunt Dorian. She'll throw a party!"

"Don't!"

"I thought you loved a good party," said Blair, and Todd's mind forcibly returned to the feeling of Blair's legs on his neck, Blair's hand in his, Blair's lips near his cheek. They'd never come as close to sleeping together as they had that night, not that they'd been all that close at the Spring Fling either. But everyone from Blair's aunt to Todd's fraternity brothers was sure that they had.

"You know," said Todd to Blair, "in KAD, there's a rule. When a girl comes into a guy's bedroom, if she sits on his chair, that means she's there to talk. If she sits on his bed, that means she's there to do other things."

"This," said Blair, her lips a whisper away from Todd's, "is not KAD."

"Not that I don't appreciate the company, but why _are_ you here?" She pointed at the beer. He snapped the tops off of two bottles, hardly leaving a mark on the nightstand at all, and handed one to her. "You came here to bring me beer?" he asked after taking a long swallow.

"Well, yeah," said Blair. "I was afraid maybe you'd been banned from Rodi's or something."

"Did you miss me?" he teased.

"Yeah," she said, and he couldn't help smiling a little. "We're friends, right?"

"Right," he agreed. If that was all he could get, he would take it.

"Good. I thought maybe all this togetherness with the Buchanans changed your mind." She stood up and inspected the portrait of Victor Lord more closely. "Or that they hypnotized you in your sleep with their creepy painting."

Todd shuddered. It was a possibility. "I wasn't sure whether Viki put me in here with that because she didn't like me or because she did."

"There's no way she knows how scary it is. She must like you," Blair decided.

"I think I'll start throwing a towel over it before I go to sleep, just in case," Todd decided.

"I've got a better idea," Blair grinned mischievously and pulled a tube of bright pink lipstick from her purse. "He can't do anything sinister wearing this shade. It's a rule." Todd watched, amused, as she scrubbed Victor Lord's pale thin lips full and pink. Then he grabbed the lipstick from her and added a pair of matching pink earrings. Around the time they gave his hair a pink highlight, they started laughing so hard that they buried their faces in pillows so that no one would hear them.

When his sides ached so much that he had to stop laughing, Todd looked at the lipstick still clenched in his fist.

_Melador_.

"This is yours!" he exclaimed.

"One of my first samples," Blair confirmed proudly. "That's why I really wanted to see you. I wanted to show you. You listened to me talk about everything the night of the Spring Fling, and if you hadn't been so nice I might not have been confident enough to go through with it."

"You were going to go through with it," Todd told her. He didn't have any doubt. "You knew exactly what you needed to do."

She looked soft and vulnerable, the way he felt when Viki complimented his writing. If there was ever a moment to kiss her, he thought this must be it. He leaned forward and she didn't pull away.

There was a knock on the door. "Todd?" It was Jessica. Wasn't she supposed to be in bed?

They jumped apart. Blair scurried into the closet. Todd was tempted to yank the portrait off the wall and throw it in after her, but he settled for turning out all of the lights except the one farthest from the painting. The deep shadow hid the alterations well enough. Removing the portrait altogether would have looked too suspicious.

He flung the door open. Jessica beamed brightly at him. "We had cupcakes at the last day of camp party!" she announced brightly. "Would you like one?"

"Sure," he said, because he was deeply opposed to turning down food and because he couldn't very well explain to her that cupcakes were one of the few foods that didn't go very well with beer.

Jessica delicately extracted a carefully packaged cupcake from her bag and slipped past Todd to place it on his desk. She gasped, and Todd started to explain that it had only been a joke and he'd meant no disrespect to her grandfather and he would clean it off and couldn't she be persuaded to not tell her parents or her brothers and he would take her and her friends to the mall every day for a week and wouldn't that be fun?

"You're not supposed to have beer in here," Jessica said, scandalized. "I only got special permission to have cupcakes upstairs because it was the last day of camp."

"You're right. I'm really sorry. I'll pour it out right now, okay?"

Regretfully, he dumped the last half bottle down the bathroom sink. It had been Blair's, not his, but it was still a waste.

Jessica rolled her eyes. "I won't tell," she said, long-suffering like she'd had life too full of big brothers. "But don't do it again." She had a lot of her mother in her, and not much at all of her cowboy father.

"How about I take you and one of your friends to the mall tomorrow?"

She twinkled approvingly. "Okay. Goodnight, Todd."

"Goodnight, Jessie."

He closed the door behind her and almost shook with relief. Busted by a twelve-year-old girl. What had become of his life?

Blair slunk out of the closet, eyes sparkling harder than Jessica's had. "The mall with Jessica and her friends. Sounds like a good time. Don't let them buy anything that shows more than this." She pulled the fabric of her stretchy top down to reveal most of her cleavage.

"Shut up," he told her. "Do you have anything to clean that off?"

"Yeah, yeah." She dug into her bag and withdrew a bottle of blue liquid and a packet of tissues. Together they restored Victor Lord to his rightful state, while Blair continued to make suggestions for what Todd should and shouldn't do at the mall. "Have them tell the women at the makeup counters that they only wear Melador."

"Melador isn't for sale yet. You have, like, one sample."

"That doesn't mean it's too early to start the buzz. And I have two samples." She withdrew a small bottle of what looked like moisturizer and squirted a dollop into her hand.

"Don't put that on him," Todd warned, still imagining how bad things might have been had it been Viki rather than Jessica who had knocked on his door.

"I'm not. I'm putting it on you."

"I'm a football player!" he objected, but he didn't move away. The thought of her fingertips caressing his skin was too enticing.

The moisturizer was soft and sweet. "You should make a line for men," he told her. "Guys like to smell good too. But put it in plain boxes."

"That's a good idea." She kissed his cheek where she'd just touched it. "You can come work at Melador if the football thing doesn't work out."

"You should come watch me play this season." He'd seen what she was good at. It was only fair that she see what he was good at. Maybe if she heard a crowd of thousands chanting his name, she'd get rid of this idea that they were just friends and realize that since everyone thought they were sleeping together anyway, they might as well do it.

"Tell me when," she said.

Todd had a plan.


	7. Pick Six

A football stadium wasn't like anywhere else in the world. Sound, light, energy, and everything else were sucked down to the empty field where only Todd and the other players were allowed to feed off of it. That was Todd's third-favorite thing about football.

Todd's second favorite thing about football was the way it made everyone love him. When Todd played well, Peter forgot to call him stupid or a disgrace; instead, he bragged to everyone in sight that that was his son out there, leading the L.U. defense. Professors who wanted to punish Todd with a failing grade got their asses handed to them by deans who wanted Todd on the football field. Important men who ruled society- doctors, lawyers, businessmen, politicians- turned into giggling schoolgirls in the presence of a great football player.

The game against Pittsburgh was the biggest of the year. The L.U. Lions were good, but not good enough to be invited to a bowl game over the more famous schools. So a nationally televised in-state matchup with another Division I school was as good as it got.

Everyone from KAD was there, basking in Todd's reflected glory.

Peter Manning had flown in from Chicago to watch Todd play.

Best of all, Blair had come. If football could make random alumni Todd had never met love Todd, and if football could make Peter Manning love Todd, then football could certainly make Blair love Todd. Hell, she already _liked_ him and he wasn't sure if that had ever happened before in his life.

If it had been anything but football, Todd probably would have fucked up under that much pressure. But it was football, and when it came to football, Todd didn't fuck up. If Todd was nervous or angry or frightened, all of that disappeared just as soon as he got the pleasure of hitting someone. It was amazingly simple. That was his most favorite thing about football.

Sure enough, just before halftime, he got the ultimate prize.

Pittsburgh's quarterback must have gone temporarily brain dead, because he threw a pass to Todd's receiver when the guy wasn't anything like open. The pass fell into Todd's hands like it was meant for him. The interception alone was enough to get the crowd howling his name, but Todd wasn't finished. He turned and ran.

Touchdown, Llanview.

They played the second half, but it was a mere formality. The pick six had turned the emotional tide in Llanview's favor. A close game became a landslide, and Todd was the hero.

As he sat on the bench and waited for the game clock to expire, Todd planned the rest of the day in his head. He'd listen to Coach tell the team how well they'd done, with special attention to Todd, and Coach would be sure all over again that he'd done the right thing when he'd changed Todd's F to C. Then Todd would talk to the reporters about how it had been a team effort and he was just glad to have been a part of it, and the reporters would write about how modest he was. He'd see his dad one more time; Peter would no doubt slip him a large check without Todd asking for it, which meant that he was proud of Todd. Blair would look at him in a whole new way and let him out of the drinking buddy hole she'd pushed him into. Then KAD would throw the biggest party since the Spring Fling—but this time, no one would dare make a joke at Todd's expense.

The first hour or so went according to plan. Todd was smiling like a fool when Blair approached with a dark-haired woman he'd never met but quickly deduced was her cousin Cassie. He did a double take when he realized that Viki was with them, too.

"I didn't expect to see you here, Mrs. Buchanan," Todd said, sticking with the formality he'd used when talking to the reporters. He was the gladiator; she was the senator's wife. Or the emperor's. Or the queen, to mix his historical metaphors. Queen Victoria was about right.

She clasped his hands in hers. "I thought we agreed that it was Viki."

"Right," he acquiesced. "Do you come to a lot of football games?"

She laughed. "This is my first in a very long time. The Banner's entire newsroom was buzzing with how important it was, and when Cassie mentioned that she and Blair were coming, too, I decided that I couldn't be the only one in Llanview to miss it. I'm certainly glad I didn't. I'll tell everyone that I had the honor of having the hero living in my home all last summer."

"The honor was mine," said Todd, and even though it fit with the crap he'd been the feeding reporters about how he was no more important than anyone else, he meant it. Viki Buchanan had a way of making him into what he usually just pretended to be.

Peter ducked back into view, seemingly able to sense wealth and power wherever it appeared. He held out his hand to Viki. "Peter Manning," he said. "Thank you for being so kind to my son. I would not have been comfortable with him staying just anywhere after that disaster last spring."

Todd felt his muscles, beautifully loosened by an easy victory and a hot shower, start to tighten up. _I flunked a test. It's not like I killed somebody_, he wanted to say, but he let Peter keep talking until Viki said she wanted to go check in with her reporters before they left.

That was when Blair put herself into his space. "Congratulations," she said, and kissed his cheek. The kiss sent the usual jolt of want through him; in fact, it was just a bit too usual. He was quite sure that even though he had made the most spectacular, flashiest play a defensive back could hope to make, Blair's feelings for him had remained unchanged. She'd liked him when he was a loser sitting on a park bench in the rain and she liked him now.

"You have no idea what happened, do you?" he asked.

"They explained it to me," she said, peeking through her eyelashes the way she did when she was coy or bullshitting or both. "It was a pick six. Pick because you picked off the other team's pass, and six because you get six points for the touchdown. See, I thought a pick six was when you went to the liquor store and they let you put six different kinds of beer in your six pack."

Todd chuckled in spite of himself. "I think I like yours better."

Blair gestured at the celebratory mood around them. "You might be a minority of one with that."

"I'm a lot of peoples' favorite person in Llanview right now because of that play," he agreed.

Blair kept her hand on his arm. "I like you because I like you, not because I like what you can do."

Todd didn't have a response to that.

Peter, however, did. His arm fell across Todd's chest and Todd stepped back from Blair. "You aren't falling for this, are you?" Peter hissed at Todd in a stage whisper. "You want a slut, get a slut who's honest about herself and you. None of this pretending she doesn't know or care what you can do for her."

"Don't you dare call my cousin names!" Cassie objected, unwilling to pretend that she hadn't heard. "You don't even know her!"

"_Cousin_?" sneered Peter. "She's already bringing around the family to meet with you, Todd? That is a black widow spider and you need to step back from her web. You want a little fun, there are girls with legs just as long as hers who know better than to try to get anything other than the night with you."

"We're not sleeping together," said Blair, and that killed Todd just a little. Of course it was true, but Blair had never corrected anyone's assumptions on the matter before. "And if we were, it wouldn't be your business."

"My son is my business. Protecting my son from a gold-digging—"

"I have my own money, you stupid old man—"

"Whoring—"

"I don't have to—"

"Slut who doesn't know her place is my most important job in this life."

"So who protects him from you?" Blair asked. She took another step toward Todd and her hand went to the back of his neck. Their eyes locked and Todd knew what she was going to do; she was going to kiss him full on the lips for the first time while his father still had his arm around Todd's chest just to prove a point.

Ten minutes earlier, he would have taken Blair any way he could get her. Now he was tired of being her prop when she wanted to make a point to someone, be it her aunt or his father. He wasn't going to let her get away with it, not when it would have meant another falling out with his father on top of everything else.

"You'd better go, Blair," he said, skirting to avoid her lips

"Yes, we'd better," agreed Cassie coolly.

"Wise decision, son," said Peter. "That touchdown was only the second best thing you did today."

That night, Todd took a girl named Annie Something-or-other up to his room midway through the party. It was fast and easy and she didn't do anything crazy like tell her to hold him or tell him she liked him.

He saw Blair at Rodi's a week or so later. He told her that he was sorry he hadn't defended her to his father and she said that everything was fine; it wasn't as if anything was really going on.

When the season ended and football was over forever for Todd, he was glad. He liked football, but he was more than ready to move on to the next phase of his life. It didn't matter that it was the only thing he'd ever been good at. When he had a real job, there weren't going to be public performances where everyone else got to sit in judgment on everything Todd did, like they were so perfect. He'd have a rich, easy life and everyone would leave him alone. He wouldn't even watch football on Sundays, he decided. He was done with football.

***

Then football decided that it wasn't done with Todd.

He was an above-average athlete; everyone who played Division I ball was. But he wasn't good enough to go pro, and he knew it. His KAD brothers slapped him on the back and told him that he was the best defensive back who had ever come through L.U. and of course he was going pro, but Todd understood that that was a combination of sucking up, ignorance, and getting caught up in the moment.

He wasn't good enough to play pro ball and everyone who really knew anything about football knew it.

Unfortunately, the Cincinnati Bengals didn't know anything about football, which was why they sucked and had more draft picks than they knew what to do with. Someone in their front office must have watched the Pittsburgh highlights a few too many times, because when they got down to the seventh round, they drafted Todd Manning out of Llanview University. Coach personally ran down to Todd's English class—for his senior year, he had taken up actually attending— and pulled him into a hastily coordinated press conference.

His father called, of course, full of praise and warnings not to screw this up or he'd wish he was never born.

As soon as he could escape, he ran straight to Rodi's. It was a local hangout, so there wouldn't be many students patting him on the back. It was dark, too, so maybe no one would even see him.

His bad luck held, though. He'd barely tasted his second beer when Marty plopped down next to him. "Hi, Todd," she slurred. She was way ahead of him.

"Hi, Marty," he said. He started to jump off the stool, but she put her hand on his leg—much too high on his leg for there to be any confusion about what she meant.

"You're the big hero," she said, tightening her fingers. "I know why I'm getting drunk by myself in a dive bar. Why are you?"

"Not your business," he told her. "Look, you've got no problems. You're graduating at the top of your class, you've got your own money, you've got your own mansion—"

"Nope." Marty threw her head back and took another drink. "My Aunt Kiki is selling my house out from under me. She's still in charge of me. Doesn't it feel like you should get to a place where other people can't control your life? You know what I mean? Don't you just want to… if someone's going to destroy your life, shouldn't it be you? Shouldn't you get the fun of destroying yourself?" Her hand slid further up his leg.

He jumped off the stool so fast he spilled his beer. "Yeah," he told Marty. "So I don't need any help from you."

Then he told the bartender he was switching to scotch. For four or five drinks, he pondered how messed up it was that he agreed with Marty about something. He needed a reminder of how much he hated Marty, he decided.

"I'm like that chick," he slurred when he miraculously managed to dial Blair's number from the payphone in the corner and she picked up. "That chick who falls down the hole and gets really small. She goes to Wonderland. Alice. I'm Alice. I'm in Wonderland."

"Are you all right?" Blair asked. "Where are you?"

"I told you. I'm in Wonderland."

"Should I come get you?"

"Why would you come get me? Not like you're my wife. You're not even my girlfriend."

"I'm your friend, though."

"You know who wanted to be my friend? Marty Saybrooke. She wanted to be really good friends tonight."

"That kind of offer would make me drink, too," said Blair. "Then you must be at Rodi's. That's where she usually trolls for men. I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Don't bother," Todd told her, but no one ever listened to Todd. Blair arrived in less time than it took him to steal the bottle of scotch from behind the bar, since the piece of shit bartender had cut him off.

"I don't think you need that," said Blair. She slid the hard-won bottle across the table and away from him.

"Give me back my bottle," he growled, and she did. He took four or five long swallows. There was not enough alcohol in the world for this.

"Todd, what happened?" she asked. She reached for his hand like she had a year ago at the Spring Fling.

"My life is never going to be mine. Not ever. You know what I should have done? I should have let myself get expelled last year." He toasted her with the bottle before taking another long drink. "Never should have left that party with you. This is your fault."

"What, exactly, is my fault?"

"I got drafted."

"I didn't think they did that since the Vietnam War."

Todd laughed until he hiccupped and buried his face in his hands. Blair took the opportunity to slide his scotch away again, and this time he let her because she was so ridiculous. "Football, Blair," her managed at last. "You ever heard of the Cincinnati Bengals?"

"Not really," said Blair.

"That's cause they suck. They suck so much they thought I could help them. You are looking at the 195th pick in the 1994 NFL draft."

"I'm guessing you don't want me to congratulate you."

"You guess right. You always were super smart. That's why you'd never do anything with me but talk. Smart enough to know a loser when you see one."

"I never thought you were a loser," said Blair. "And obviously the Cincinnati Bengals don't, either. Can't you take it as a compliment that they want you and politely say, no thank you?"

"I floated that idea by Mr. Peter Manning. It did not go well."

Blair tugged Todd's arm around her shoulders and steadied him against her. "Let's get out of here."

"Why?"

"So you can have some water and some vitamins and hopefully not be hung over too bad tomorrow."

It took him three tries to find his wallet and empty its contents onto the table. Then he let Blair drag him into the fresh air, and, eventually, to her little penthouse that was really her aunt's little penthouse. She deposited him on her bed.

"If I'd known that getting plastered was all it took to get into your bed, I would have done it sooner," he told her.

"Uh-huh," she told him, busying herself collecting the promised water and vitamins.

"It's your last chance, Babe. I'm graduating next week and then I'm off to Cincinnati. Then we'll never see each other again."

"I hope that isn't true," she said, and she almost sounded like she meant it.

"Everyone thinks we've been knocking boots for a year," he told her.

"I know that."

"So why aren't we? You ain't in love with some other guy."

"I'm in love with Melador."

"You could have us both."

"You know how you don't like to pick fights with your father?" she asked. That was an understatement. "I don't like to pick fights with my aunt."

"But your aunt loves you," Todd blurted out drunkenly.

"Your dad loves you," said Blair weakly, but he could see that she knew she was lying.

"When I'm doing exactly what he wants. Every time I make a mistake—" Todd clapped his hands together to simulate the sound of a beating. Blair jumped. "You don't know what that feels like."

She sat beside him on the bed. "I was in foster care for the first eleven years of my life. They can kick you out of a home because you were too loud or too quiet or you laid the silverware out in the wrong order or one of the other kids told a lie about you. Then you start over with a whole new family and try not to make them mad."

"But your aunt is your aunt. She's not gonna throw you out for doing with me what she thinks you're doing with me anyway."

"I know," said Blair, but she had a far-off look in her eyes that unnerved him.

"Tell Uncle Todd all about it," he said. Even if his own life was shit, he really did want to hear about hers. It wasn't like she was Marty.

"Tell you what?"

"Tell me about when your aunt took you out of foster care," he said.

She gave him a long, serious look. "All right."


	8. Blair's Story

It was obviously something Blair didn't usually talk about. She twisted her hands and stared at a thread in the bedspread.

"I only heard bits and pieces of the background later," she said at last. "But it's an important part of the story. When this started, Aunt Dorian was still married to Uncle Herb. He's Cassie's father, but not her biological father. Her biological father was a man named David Renaldi, and when he came to town it didn't do good things to Aunt Dorian's marriage."

"She cheated?" asked Todd, not at all surprised. He had a hard time imagining Dorian loving a man enough to be faithful to him.

"Yes. No. I don't know."

"That about covers it."

"Even if she didn't actually cheat, David Renaldi knew things about her family and her past that she'd never told Herb. She'd never told anyone. She didn't think it was their business and she just wanted to forget." Blair sighed and leaned her head against Todd. "I know the feeling. So the more Dorian seemed drawn to David, the less Herb liked it.

"He's a very good man. He's the kind of man who takes in fatherless girls and treats them like his own. He believes in justice and fairness and all those things that seem like a luxury you can't afford when your life isn't going so well."

Todd snorted with approval, and Blair allowed him a half-smile.

"Herb is such a nice guy that people used to wonder what he was doing with Dorian," Blair concluded. "But it wasn't that he didn't know how to fight. It wasn't that the underhanded stuff wouldn't occur to him. You just had to push him really far before he'd do something. And this thing with Cassie's biological father did it. He knew that Dorian sent money to her parents' house in Ohio—"

"Don't mention Ohio."

"Canton, then. A woman who'd helped raise Mama and her sisters still lived in the family's old house. Herb went there to try to find out what was so secret about Cassie being born and David's family being the one to take her when she was a baby. Since he couldn't get it from Aunt Dorian, he was going to get it another way."

"And he found what he was looking for?"

"Nope. He found something else. He found out that they'd faked Mama's death. It was something a lot of families did back then with children who weren't… completely there." Blair twirled her finger around her ear in the universal symbol for _insane_. "Mama was dangerous, she couldn't help herself, so they sent her away. The sent her all the way to Florida." Blair's hands clenched into angry fists. "They put her there under a fake name. When the money ran out, the hospital couldn't find her family and they sent her into a state institution. A state mental institution back then… God. They treated the patients worse than animals. Nobody wanted them so nobody cared. They'd leave people in restraints for days. Patients got violent with patients. Staff got violent with patients. And somehow Mama turned up pregnant."

Todd took one of Blair's hands and rubbed it until her fingers loosened and threaded through his.

"Anyway," said Blair, "Once Herb found out about this, Dorian had something new to obsess over that wasn't David Renaldi. They went down to Florida to get Addie transferred to St. Ann's, in Llanview. The nuns at St. Ann's are wonderful. They're kind and they're patient and they made sure to get Mama's medication just right so she could have some kind of life, even if she'll never be able to be out of the hospital for more than a day or two.

"Then they started tracking down her baby. It had been eleven years, so it wasn't easy to do, but they made it happen. The first time I saw them, I didn't imagine that they were there for me. I'd been taken out of my foster home and brought to the orphanage, but I didn't know why. It happened all the time and I usually didn't know why, just that that home was one more place that didn't want me.

"I was hiding in a closet. I did that a lot. It was the only way I could get any privacy, or any quiet to daydream. But the yelling, and the threats, they went on and on and I couldn't do anything but listen. There was no way to get out of the closet and I was afraid of what would happen if the social workers found out I'd overheard people saying those things to them. I thought about it and thought about it and by the time they came looking for me my head hurt so bad I couldn't even talk.

"They pulled me out of the closet and the social worker said 'that's her.' I swear, I almost passed out and wet myself and about ten other things thinking I was the one they were angry with. Dorian looked me in the face—I was almost as tall as she was already—and said hello and I couldn't even answer. I looked into her eyes and I saw so much disappointment and so much anger and so much fear. But she wasn't as afraid as those social workers were, because they sent me away with Dorian and Herb right on the spot.

"They took me to their hotel and they let me order whatever food I wanted off of room service. I'd never been in a hotel or gotten to choose what I ate before, so that was nice." Blair almost smiled. "They called Cassie and told her that there were some legal odds and ends to work out, but she could fly down and meet me. While they were talking to Cassie I pretended to fall asleep so I wouldn't have to think of things to say to them. And when they thought I was asleep…"

Blair trailed off. Todd didn't push her to say anything more. He'd wanted to know Blair's whole story almost since he'd met her, but he wasn't going to browbeat her into finishing if she didn't want to.

"Well, it was what you would expect," she managed eventually. "Dorian thought I might be dangerous like Addie. She didn't think she and Herb should sleep at the same time that night because maybe I'd get up and stab them with scissors. She said that I was her responsibility and of course she'd find the right therapeutic boarding school for me but Herb couldn't delude himself into thinking I was just scared.

"We went to the mall the next morning. If I pointed at it and it fit, they bought it for me. I'd never had that many clothes in my whole life. Then they let me stay with Cassie while they went to finish the legal end of things, getting custody of me so they could take me back to Llanview. Cassie took me to the toy store first, but I didn't even know what to want. I still wasn't talking very much. So Cassie decided that if we had time to kill, we would go get makeovers. We went right up to the counter in the department store, and, oh! I'd never seen anything like it." Blair grinned at the memory. "All these beautiful women, all the different colors. I started asking questions and I didn't stop. They thought I was older than I was because I was so tall, so they gave me a lot more than a little bit of lipgloss and blush like you'd usually give a kid that age. Cassie let them go because I was having so much fun. I think I thought of the idea for Melador right there.

"By the time we got back to the hotel, Cassie and I had gone from talking about makeup to everything else. It was easier with her because I think I saw her as a kid." Blair shrugged. "She was about our age then, or a little younger. Cassie started telling Dorian about all the things she was going to do with me in Llanview, and Dorian said that I was only staying until they'd found a safe place for me because I had special needs and all that. Cassie got into a fight with her right there. You think Cassie's all sweet and nice and a minister's wife, right? That's only because you've never seen her go at it with Aunt Dorian.

"So Cassie and Herb both want Aunt Dorian to have an open mind about me and she's feeling more and more backed into a corner. She decided that she wasn't going home; she was going to Canton to confront Miss Stonecliff about Mama and me. She wasn't going to wait and Herb wasn't going to let her go alone, and Cassie was all fascinated, thinking this tied into why Dorian had given her to her biological father's family and not stayed in touch.

"And you all ended up going to Canton?" Todd surmised easily.

"Oh yes. The single creepiest place on earth, and believe you me I know creepy places. And that woman, Miss Stonecliff." Blair shuddered. "No wonder Mama and Aunt Melinda went crazy, between her and their mother. She was obsessed with her… I guess she was my grandmother. Sonya. She was a pianist and having three little girls running around the house didn't mix with her art. Mama was the oldest, so they blamed Mama for stealing Sonya's youth. Dorian looked like Sonya, so they blamed her for stealing Sonya's beauty. And Melinda played the piano like Sonya, so they blamed her for stealing Sonya's talent. It got to the point where to stop Melinda from playing, they staged a horseback riding accident to ruin Melinda's hand."

"They just told you all this?"

Blair shrugged again. "Miss Stonecliff was accusing Dorian and Dorian was accusing Miss Stonecliff. They sent Cassie and me upstairs to Dorian's old bedroom. I didn't really care; I sat there and played with her plastic horses. That was when I thought I might like her, after all, because she had toy horses. I guess Cassie was bored or wanted to look around or whatever, because she went up to the attic."

"Where they were hiding a crazy woman," concluded Todd, who had always liked horror movies.

Blair glared. "You got someone else to tell you this story?" she accused. "Who? I know it wasn't Dorian or Cassie!"

"Wait, really?" Todd tried to focus around the fuzzy remnants of alcohol. The story itself was sobering, but he really had drunk quite a lot. "I was kidding."

"Sadly, I'm not," said Blair, but she seemed mollified enough to continue. "Turns out that when Dorian told her father what her mother had done to Melinda—I guess they were trying to frame Dorian so they could get rid of her like they did Mama—Sonya got angry and she ended up killing her own husband. So they decided that Miss Stonecliff would pretend that both Sonya and her husband had died in a plane crash, but really…"

"Meanwhile, Cassie opens the door up in the attic."

Blair nodded. "And when Sonya sees Cassie, she sees Dorian and wants to get rid of her. She blames Dorian for everything that happened since Dorian was born, basically. But you know Cassie. She's so sweet and so stubborn. She thinks that if she just tries hard enough, she'll make this woman realize who she is and just embrace her as a long-lost granddaughter. Like, two days before Cassie had made me talk like a regular kid when they weren't sure I could, right? So Cassie figures she's on a roll. But she's not. Sonya doesn't want to be friends. She wants to kill Dorian, and she thinks Cassie _is_ Dorian. Finally the screaming and the struggling get loud enough and Dorian and Herb and Miss Stonecliff all run upstairs. Sonya gets killed in the struggle, and Miss Stonecliff lights the whole damn place on fire. They can't get to her. They barely got to me."

"And after that, you all lived happily ever after?"

"Well, Dorian thought she'd give me a chance to prove I could be allowed out in public." Blair sighed hard and leaned against Todd. He liked how she felt there—warm and soft and right. "I know she loves me. I get why she was worried when she first saw me. But deep down, I couldn't ever forget that she kept it in mind to lock me away."

"You're an adult, you know," said Todd, gently playing with Blair's long blonde hair. "She can't lock you up because you start a company or because you go out with me."

"I know," said Blair. "Your father can't do anything if you don't want to play football anymore." She sat up and planted her arms on either side of Todd's chest. Her face was inches from his. He liked that position a lot. "You be who you want to be," she told him. "Not who your dad tells you to be. If you don't want to go to Cincinatti, don't go. If you want to play bad so they don't keep you, do that. But be you. Okay?"

Todd leaned up to kiss her; on cue, the phone rang angrily.

Blair jumped away and answered it.

"Hello… Kevin? Yes, he's here….Yeah, he mentioned that about Marty… Why?... Yeah, okay. He's on his way."

Todd glowered. "I'm not on my way anywhere. I hope you know that," he told Blair as she hung up. For the past year, he'd more and more started to think that Kevin was an okay guy. He didn't think that anymore. He was not going to jump because Kevin told him to.

"Marty's in the hospital." Blair rolled her eyes. "She's not supposed to drink like that because it screws up her Lupus medication, did you know?"

Todd grunted. He didn't care.

"You might have turned Marty down, but Powell didn't. He was with her when it happened. He's really freaked out. Wants his 'brother.'" Blair made sarcastic air quotes. "He seems to think you can fix anything. You better go, or Kevin will be here to escort you. Worse, Kevin might send his mother here to escort you."

Todd made a face. It really did seem like he should be there with Viki's family.

"You coming?" he asked Blair as he tried to pull himself together.

Blair shook her head. "I'm not Marty's favorite person."

"Neither am I," Todd objected, knowing that that wasn't the point. "Look, if I don't see you again—"

"See me again. Come visit. I'll come visit you and sell Melador in Cincinnati."

He wished he could believe her. "Well, if you don't, have a nice life." He ran his hand down her side to soften the words. "Your family secrets are safe with me," he added.

"I know. That's why I told you." She kissed his cheek; he leaned into her lips, eyes closed. "Be who you want to be," she repeated once more before he left, truly not expecting to see her again.


	9. Walkin' on the Sun

Of course he didn't listen to Blair. Of course he listened to Peter Manning. And of course he found himself stuck spending his days in a sweaty mess with men who were bigger and stronger and stupider and crazier than he was.

He laughed at Blair's thought that he should throw his tryout. Football was the one thing he'd ever done well and he didn't know how to pretend otherwise. To his shock, he made the roster.

He didn't play except when there was a disaster leaving the coach with no other option, but that was all right. He was in the NFL. He hadn't planned for this, exactly, but any man who said he'd never dreamed about playing pro football was either lying or really really gay. The food the team brought into the locker room was good and the cheerleaders were easy. Peter was pleased with him most of the time, even if he sometimes asked Todd how he could live with himself knowing he was so useless that he never got off the bench. It was an okay limbo in which to spend a few years.

Llanview and L.U. and KAD faded away from his consciousness.

When the team went to Philadelphia to play the Eagles, the Banner dutifully sent a reporter to ask "the former L.U. standout" how it felt "not to be a star in the pros." Todd dutifully spit out the correct answers about caring more for the team than himself—he'd known enough to say that since Sam Rappaport had been his coach, after all—and waited for it to be over.

Then, when it was over, Kevin Buchanan joined the sports reporter.

A strange sensation coursed through Todd. It was almost as if he was glad to see Kevin. Todd decided that it was probably just jetlag.

"My mom and Jessica wanted to be sure I invited you to dinner," Kevin said when they'd shaken hands. "They reminded me three or four times."

"I wish I could," said Todd. "The team has to leave right after the game."

"I figured," said Kevin.

"Tell your mom and Jessie I'm sorry."

"Sure."

"How are they doing?"

"Good," said Kevin in the polite way people did when they didn't feel like a real answer was required.

"How about Powell?" Todd pushed. He hadn't even thought of Powell since graduation. As intense as Powell had been about the bonds of their ersatz brotherhood, it was a little odd that he hadn't made any effort to stay in touch with Todd. (Todd was the football star; football stars never had to make efforts to maintain personal relationships because other people always made the effort for them.)

Kevin's lips tightened.

"What happened to Powell?" Todd repeated. He put on his best 'concerned' face. He might even have been concerned. Sometimes it was hard for him to tell. It was obviously hard for Kevin to tell, too, because Kevin took a moment too long to answer.

"He had a hard time," Kevin said at last. "He's sensitive," he added, using the term his mother had always used to excuse Powell's brand of crazy.

"He really freaked out when Marty ended up in the hospital right before graduation."

"He never quite came back from that," Kevin admitted, and Todd took that to mean that Powell had gone from hysterical fearful outbursts over Marty's well-being to out-and-out obsession with Marty. Powell had been headed that way when Todd had picked up for Cincinnati. "His parents decided to get him some help."

"They put him in a loony bin?"

Kevin scowled, not caring for Todd's word choice. "It was a wakeup call for Marty, though. She straightened out and went right into med school. She's doing great."

"Good for her," Todd lied, because maybe if he sounded pleasant and nice and decent Kevin would tell him about Blair. Then he remembered that he wouldn't give Kevin that satisfaction of knowing he wondered about Blair and he didn't ask. But by then it was too late to tell Kevin to remind Marty that it was bad form to try to cure all her patients with sexual healing, so he let Kevin go.

Another year passed. For the second time, Todd almost inexplicably made the team, with the help of a few freak injuries to would-be teammates who really and truly were better than he was.

It happened to be a rule on the team that second year players invited the rookies to their homes for a welcome to the team dinner. Except everyone knew that instead of "dinner," it was a party, and instead of "the rookies," the whole team crashed. It took about a quarter of a minimum-salary player's yearly earnings to throw the damn party.

Todd was less of a party animal when he had to spend his own money and let his own house get destroyed.

Halfway through the party, he was wondering if he should just burn the place down and move. One of the running backs, more drunk than high, was standing on the couch with his dick in his hand, pretending to masturbate while half a dozen women ducked out of the way of the imaginary spray. The team's kicker, more high than drunk, was giving wet willies wherever he could get close to an ear with a spit-soaked finger. Sex, in twosomes and threesomes and foursomes, was happening in every bedroom and bathroom and closet and corner. Only Todd's own bedroom was spared because he'd locked it and claimed to have lost the key. Everyone realized he was lying and he didn't fucking care.

He took another drink and let one of the cheerleaders writhe around him in time to the music.  
_  
And if you follow  
There may be a tomorrow  
But if the offer's shunned  
You might as well be walkin' on the sun_

If it hadn't been his own house, he wouldn't have been half-sober and paying enough attention to see her as soon as she walked in.

But if it hadn't been his own house, she probably wouldn't have walked in, anyway.

He pushed the cheerleader into the accepting arms of one of his teammates and forced his way through the party to Blair.

"What are you doing here?" he asked as soon as he was close enough for his shout to be heard.

"I told you I'd come visit you," she said, like over a year hadn't gone by since she'd made that particular declaration. She had a little travel bag on wheels with her.

"You planning on staying?" he asked.

"Well, I was going to ask you if I could," she said, lowering her eyes artfully. "There's some convention in town and all the hotels are booked. But when I saw you were having a party, I thought I should at least say hi before I started driving back to Llanview."

He knew he'd been right to lock his room.

He took Blair by the hand and led her through the chaos of the party. There were whistles and questions about where Todd had been hiding this, as well as the occasional comment that teammates were teammates and needed to share that made Todd want to take somebody's head off even though he'd said the exact same thing more than once.

In the comparative quiet of his room, Todd handed Blair the key.

"You can come back to the party if you want, but you lock the door behind you and you keep the key with you," he warned. "If you stay in here, you don't open the door unless you're positive, and I mean positive, that it's to me. Every guy down there thinks he's entitled to have sex with every woman he looks at, and they all looked at you. These guys are local heroes. They can do no wrong. They get away with everything. You have to take that seriously."

Blair cocked her head in pretended curiosity. "I have the strangest sense of deja vu. I seem to recall that about two years ago I went to a party and Kevin Buchanan was appalled when I wanted to go for a walk with the biggest partier in all of Kappa Alpha Delta. Who was that guy?" She snapped her fingers. "I just can't remember his name."

Todd didn't appreciate the irony. "I need you to stay safe. And I need my bedroom to stay safe," he added, because he didn't want her to get any crazy and possibly realistic ideas about how he'd been pining for her since he'd left Llanview. "Nobody has sex in my bedroom but me."

"That happen a lot?" she asked.

"That's not your business," he told her.

"What I meant was, do you have a girlfriend who wouldn't like it if I slept in your bed?"

"Oh." Todd shook his head. "No. You should get into bed. Right now."

Blair laughed. "You really don't want me to go to that party, do you?"

"I really don't," he admitted. He'd always been honest with her about most things.

"Okay," she agreed. "I won't." She handed the key back to him and batted her eyes. "I'll stay locked in your tower until you come to free me, Sir Todd."

"Come out if the house burns down," he said, mindful of the story she'd told about her crazy relatives the last time they'd spoken. "Knowing some of these guys, it's a possibility."

"I'll remember."

"I'd like to kick them out now, but I can't. It'll be most of the night."

"Okay," she said again. She kissed his cheek and he wondered what the hell was going on. "Enjoy your party."

There wasn't much chance of that.

He did what he could to speed the party along to a premature end. He bribed some of the girls to lure their targets elsewhere. He started a rumor that there was a better time to be had elsewhere. He surreptitiously called in noise complaints to the police. He had his hand on the circuit breaker to cut the power before it occurred to him that as long as the supply of booze and women held out, no one would care if the lights went off. They would probably even prefer it.

It was the early hours of the morning before he'd successfully sent his guests out into the world and unlocked the door to his own bedroom.

He found Blair asleep in his bed.

The sight pleased him. Rather than take a shower and lie down himself, as he'd intended, he fell into a chair and stared at her. He actually had her in his bed; why miss a minute of it and take the chance that she'd vanish if he looked away?

He wasn't sure how long he stared at her, but eventually her cat-green eyes blinked open and she rolled over, languidly stretching out in his bed, caressing it like she should have been caressing him.

Blair focused her gaze on Todd, completely unashamed to have put on a show for him in her sleep, completely unbothered to have found him there. It was an unconscious confidence and trust that was sexy as hell. "Todd?" she asked. "What are you doing?"

He shrugged. "Just thinking," he said, because that was technically true.

"Party over?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Want your bed back?" she asked, making no move to get up.

"I think my bed likes you better than it likes me," he told her.

"I know that's not true." She stroked a pillow invitingly with her hand. "I think this bed just loves you."

If Todd hadn't known better, he would have thought it was an invitation. He stared numbly at her.

"We could always share," she suggested. She scooted over, leaving open the place still arm from her body.

"What are you doing, Blair?" he tried.

She swung her long legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. He choked back a gasp; she was wearing a scrap of black lace that left almost nothing to his imagination. "You didn't want me at your other party," she said. "I thought we could have our own party." She pulled him to his feet; he followed her direction, mesmerized, as she began to dance with him.

When she kissed him, he kissed back. Wildly, he wondered if it was actually happening after so many near misses. Had Blair really just shown up out of the blue and planted herself all but naked in his bed? Did he really care why, as long as it was happening?

Before he lost his nerve, he pushed her hard onto the bed and climbed on top of her. The kissing got harder and faster; after a moment he pulled back to look at her, to convince himself once again that she was really there.

She ran her hand gently down the side of his face, playing with his hair, which had grown long enough for a ponytail over the past year. She looked into his eyes and a wave of fear overwhelmed him. This was the woman who had looked at him and talked to him when he'd been the loser expelled from L.U. for being too stupid to pass a test. This was the woman who made it plain that she didn't care whether he had the play of the day on ESPN or not. This was the woman who snuck into his bedroom with beer and made him laugh at the stupid portrait of Kevin Buchanan's grandfather. This was the woman who peeled him off the floor of a bar when he needed it and told him her darkest secrets.

He'd never done anything like this with anyone like her in his life.

He grabbed her hand and pinned it over her head so that she wouldn't touch him like that again. He was going to get through this; Blair wasn't going to get a chance to run away and call him a freak like those other women- those other women-

Blair pushed him hard in the chest. "Todd, let's just, let's just, Sweetie, let's just slow down."

It was the 'Sweetie' that undid him more than anything that had happened so far. He decided to cut the humiliation short, put Blair in his past where she belonged, and never mention this to anyone.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," he muttered. "Look, I have to go to practice-"

"You do not have practice at 4:00 in the morning," she said. She reached again for his hair, which seemed to fascinate her. He leaned back, but she was persistent. "I'm not staying stop, Todd," she murmured. "I'm saying, let's go slow. If you try it, you might like it."

"If you want me to stop, you just let me know," he blurted out. He was pretty sure that no woman, ever, had really enjoyed having sex with him. It hadn't mattered in the past; he hadn't cared about them, and he'd kept in mind Peter's warnings about the nature of women. But with Blair, it mattered. He'd never had sex with a woman he liked before. Hell, the only other woman he liked with Kevin's mother, and the thought of _that_ almost made him run screaming from the room.

She didn't answer. Instead, she drew him into another deep kiss. "Slow," she whispered into his ear. "Slow."

She unbuttoned his shirt, kissing down his chest as she went. She stayed in charge up through the moment of entry; by then, Todd's nerves had vanished and he couldn't think of anything but Blair's skin and Blair's curves and Blair's mouth and Blair's hot, wet, insides.

His mind didn't reconnect with his body until sometime later when he had Blair's naked body draped over his own like the best blanket ever. "What are you doing here, Blair?" he asked.

She laughed. "If you don't know, I could do it again and see if you figure it out that time."

"No!" He reconsidered. "Well, maybe. Definitely. But why are you in Cincinatti and not Llanview?"

"I came to see you."

"Just like that," he said flatly.

"I did tell you I would visit you when you left."

"You didn't call," he pointed out.

"I'm so sorry for the breach of social etiquette. What would your friend Viki say?"

"You know what I'm asking. How about you answer for real? I thought we had this thing where we told each other the truth."

"Okay," she whispered. "Truth. There was no convention. I could have gotten a hotel room. I came here to see what would happen. If I could make this happen." She gestured aimlessly at their entangled, naked bodies. "I almost turned around when I saw that you were having a party, but then it seemed like a sign. The first time I met you it was at a party a lot like that one."

"Why now? Why not when I was hitting on you every time we had a drink? You just want what you can't have?"

"Maybe. A little." She sighed and rolled off of him, but snuggled close to his side like she had the night she'd told him about her family. "I was attracted to this man. I crossed paths with him doing things with Melador because he owned a spa. Him and his wife."

"Ouch," said Todd, because even he knew better than to fly into a jealous rage at the thought that Blair had been after someone else.

"He seemed like the kind of man I was supposed to be with. Older and sophisticated and a big deal with the main line upper crust. So I decided that I should go get him, like I went and got Melador."

"It didn't work?"

"It did, for a while. He never quite told me he was going to leave his wife, but… Well, even when I had him it wasn't as much fun as it was supposed to be. It wasn't as much fun as I used to have with you. And there was this whole thing where I accidentally ran over his wife."

Todd's laughter shook the bed. "Accidentally?"

She slapped him lightly with her manicured hand. "It was an accident! And after that, it was like, what am I doing? How am I finding it inside me to do that when I couldn't even find the courage to figure out what was going on with us because you were younger and a football player and Dorian doesn't like you? It's why I didn't call ahead. I was afraid I'd lose my nerve. I wanted to see in person if you were interested for real. A lot of times, men, they'll hit on you over and over like you used to and the prize is getting your number or getting you to say yes. It's all about the pursuit. They don't really want you if they can get you."

"Did Dorian tell you that?"

"It's true!"

Todd shrugged. He wasn't going to acknowledge that Blair's witch of an aunt had a point, not when it didn't apply to him, not with Blair. "I really want you," he said, flipping himself on top of her and kissing her neck until she moaned. This time, there were no false starts.


	10. A Scar

The next few weeks were the happiest of Todd's life. Blair's company was two years old, and she could run it from Cincinnati at least for a little while. In the mornings, while Todd was at practice, Blair would go around to the local stores and spas and push them to stock Melador products- or to use more of them, if they already did.

The afternoons they spent mostly in bed.

At night they'd go out to one of the exclusive, wild places that was always open to a professional athlete, even one who'd barely ever played.

It was basically the perfect life.

Todd couldn't help being convinced that it would all collapse, and he wasn't wrong.

The last preseason game of the year generally meant less than nothing. Todd expected to play for once because the stars would all be rested in preparation for the regular season. The team wasn't going to risk an injury to a player who mattered in a game that didn't.

The locker room was filled with nerves of rookies who hoped to prove themselves and guffaws of veterans who had nothing better to do today than make fun of the quarterback for having banged a cheerleader that everyone knew had once been engaged to the opposing team's star tight end.

Todd was half-ready for the game- taped and wrapped, but not yet into his pads- when the scuffle broke out in the hall between the home and visiting locker rooms. From what he could hear, it was all about the stupid girl, who certainly wasn't worth it. (It wasn't like she was Blair.)

Coach threw open the door and Todd could see the years being scared off the man's life when he saw his quarterback, unprotected, backed against the wall by a flurry of punches. The quarterback took an elbow to the throat; his eyes rolled back in his head. "Get him out of there!" Coach barked at Todd and a few of the rookies who were close by.

Despite the fact that football basically consisted of hitting people, it had been quite a long time since Todd had been in a real fight. In college, all he'd had to do was threaten and everyone else had backed down. In the pros, he'd mostly known his place and stayed out of the way. Almost every fight that happened in the locker room was really a lot of posturing and shoving while the combattants waited to be pulled apart so they could shout at each other from across the room that they would have beaten the shit out of each other if only they hadn't been restrained.

It never occurred to him to disobey Coach's order. Half naked or not, Todd ran into the fray. It was always, always the other players' job to protect the quarterback. In this case, the quarterback wasn't a bad guy, either; he wasn't into humiliating the younger or less talented players. He just happened to have at least one woman in every city they passed through.

Todd landed a few punches in between trying to rip bodies away from his teammate. He took a few more punches than he landed, but he knew how to play through it. He didn't like to expose his back and be surrounded by enemy combatants on all sides, but there was no other way…

Everything flashed white as something hard hit him behind his right ear and his head bounced off the wall. The brawl was forgotten as Todd gripped his head with both hands, feeling blood and trying to stay conscious. He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain and fell to his knees. He attempted to crawl back to the locker room but he never found out whether he made it there.

* * *

The next thing Todd knew, he was in a bed and Peter was yelling. Disconcerted, he tried to figure out what he'd done wrong around the pounding in his head. The pain was almost unbearable.

"You stay away from my son!" Peter was bellowing. "You have no business being this close to him after what happened. I ought to have you arrested!"

"For what? Loving your son?" Todd's whole body shivered. That was Blair. The last time Blair and Peter had gone at it, Todd had ended up standing there like a fool while Peter called Blair names. It wasn't going to happen this time, not now when he and Blair were as close as they always should have been.

"You do not love my son. You want to hitch your wagon to my son, you want to exploit my son, you don't give a damn that because of you my son just had emergency surgery to correct a subdural hematoma!"

Todd didn't know what that meant, but he supposed it explained his headache and why he was finding it impossible to sit up.

"I had nothing to do with it! I wasn't even there!" Blair objected. "There was a fight and he got hit over the head with something heavy and I came to the hospital just as soon as the locker room attendant called me."

"There was a fight over a _woman_," Peter corrected. "I hadn't thought there was any particular woman in Todd's life- which is just as it should be for a man of his age and station- and then I came here and saw you and it all made sense. What happened? You worked your way through the entire team and then convinced Todd to defend your honor? He's had a blind spot for you since he was in college. But the joke's on you, Lady- and I use that term loosely- because he'll never play football again."

"Who cares?" asked Blair. "I bet Todd doesn't. He only kept playing to please you."

"Oh, so you don't care about him losing the career he worked for his whole life. That's the most honest thing you've ever said. I suppose you don't care about him being deaf in one ear, either, or the scarring on his face that the plastic surgeon doesn't think he'll be able to fix!"

Todd's hand flew to his face. For the first time, he realized that it was swathed in bandages. Peter and Blair were both yelling, and between that and his headache he hadn't noticed that he'd heard everything through his uncovered left ear and nothing at all through his cotton-wrapped right.

"I care that he's in pain," said Blair. "But he can do more than play football and I know that. That's more than I can say for you, since you're the one who got him convinced that he's stupid and that everyone's out to get him."

"Not everyone. Just gold-digging little homewreckers. Oh, don't look so surprised. I heard what you did to that woman when her husband wouldn't leave her for you."

"That was an accident!" Blair snapped.

"Accidents just follow you around, don't they? What happened to that Luna person was an accident. What happened to my son was an accident."

"I had nothing to do with what happened to Todd! If you want to blame someone for that, look in the mirror and remember who bullied him into playing football in the first place. Some day, Todd will realize exactly what you did to him, exactly what you took from him!"

"What is that supposed to mean?" Peter thundered, but his voice trailed off shakily.

"Can't handle the truth, old man?" Blair asked. "Have to fake a heart attack?"

That was when Todd summoned everything he had to throw himself out of bed despite the tubes and wires meant to keep him in place. It wasn't far to the door, and he opened it to see his father writhing on the floor, clearly in the throes of a heart attack. Blair had backed away and was screaming for help, which came quickly in the form of a team of nurses who whisked Peter into a wheelchair and out of sight.

Two more nurses and a doctor came to put Todd back in bed. He stumbled and swore; pain aside, his sense of balance had deserted him.

"That's the damage to your ear," one of the nurses said gently. "They help you balance and some of that's gone. You'll learn to compensate for it, but you can't get up on your own for now, not so soon after surgery."

"My dad?" Todd asked, temporarily too terrified to care about his own pain.

"If you're going to have a heart attack, the place to have one is when you're already in the hospital," the doctor answered. "They'll take good care of him. He'll have every chance because he received treatment immediately. But you've just come out of surgery yourself, and you need rest. Under the circumstances, I'm going to add a little something to your IV to help you along. All right?"

It was clear that Todd was going to be dosed with a sedative whether he said it was all right or not. The world went white again.

* * *

The next time Todd revived, there was an orderly in the room with him. "Hey," he said, hoping to get painkillers for his head or at least an update on his father's status. It wasn't until she turned around that he saw that it wasn't an orderly at all. It was Blair, who had somehow commandeered a hospital uniform.

Even driven to the edge of madness with pain, wondering whether his father had lived or died, and with a face full of bandages, Todd noticed that Blair looked hot. If all this hadn't happened, he wouldn't have minded playing the naughty patient and the even naughtier nurse. No, he would not have minded that at all.

"New career, Blair?" he asked instead. "Melador not working out after all?"

She started hard at the sound of his voice and crumbled at the side of his bed. "It was the only way I could get in to see you. I had to see you, Todd. I had to see for myself that you were going to be okay." She gently stroked the few strands of hair that weren't covered by his bandage.

"My dad?" he asked.

"Stable. He came through the surgery. It sounded like this wasn't his first heart attack?"

"No," said Todd. "It wasn't."

"I'm sorry," said Blair. "If I'd known, I wouldn't have- well, I meant everything I said to him but I didn't want to do anything to make this harder on you than it already is." She grabbed his hand and kissed it. "Do you need anything? Should I call the doctor?"

"Not yet." His mind churned through the insurmountable list of problems before him. One was that he didn't know the extent of his own injuries. They'd told him about the damage to his ear and that that alone was enough to mean he would never play football again, but they hadn't explained why his whole face was bandaged. "Do you have a hand mirror? Like a compact or something?" He knew she always did.

Blair paled, realizing why he was asking. She pulled her bag from its hiding place under a chair and removed a thick plastic rectangle, emblazoned, naturally, with the Melador logo. She held it just out of his reach. "You'll get better, you know," she said. "A lot of what you see now is just swelling."

He had no patience for her attempt to soften the blow. "Give me the mirror, Blair."

She did.

It was worse than he could have imagined. He looked like Freddy Krueger.

He sank back against the pillow and let the mirror fall from his hand. Peach-colored powder exploded from behind it when it hit the floor. He closed his eyes, but all he could see was his distorted, damaged face.

"Get out," he told Blair.

"Not until you tell me you know the swelling will go down and you'll look better then."

"I'm deformed, all right? My football career is over, I'm deaf in one ear, and my father is down the hall dying. That's enough. I don't need you to go around pretending that it's sunshine and roses and that you always secretly wanted to screw the Elephant Man. I'm not stupid."

"You're not stupid and you do not look like the Elephant Man," said Blair.

Todd glared at her. She looked casually back at him, but he saw that she was faking it. He'd always had a way of knowing with her. "I scare you, don't I?" he asked.

She bent down to put the shattered compact back together. "No," she said.

"I know when you're lying, Blair."

She looked him full in his ruined face again. "Then you know I'm not lying when I tell you that the only reason I don't like looking at you right now is that I don't like to see you hurting. And I regret my part in that."

"What did you do?"

"If I hadn't fought with your father-"

Todd almost laughed, but stopped himself when he realized how painful that would be. "Arguments don't cause heart conditions. If you sped it along, that probably helped him because it happened here and not in his hotel room."

"Are you sure?" Her big green eyes were brimming with tears.

"I heard the whole argument, Blair. I'm sure. I'm not going to lose the only thing I have left. The only thing that was ever really mine, not his."

He reached for her hand and held on.


	11. Run-Around

The next few days were even harder. The pain got worse, not better, thanks to the doctors weaning Todd off the drugs they'd put him on to get him through the surgery. His face looked worse, too.

Todd had played football long enough to see plenty of gruesome injuries: bones poking out of legs, arms bending in places arms should never bend, bloody faces behind shattered face shields. That didn't mean he was prepared to see himself looking like this. And it was difficult to take Blair seriously when she said that she'd pretty much always planned on being the good looking one in their relationship, anyway.

It wasn't until the third day that the doctors decided that Todd was steady enough in an upright position to visit his father. They hadn't told him much about Peter's latest heart attack, but Todd knew that it had to have been a bad one because Peter hadn't been brought in to see Todd.

He worried even more when Blair came in to visit him and hour later than he'd expected.

"Where were you?" he whined. He figured that it was okay to whine for at least a week after your face exploded and you lost hearing in one ear.

Blair sat beside him, looking very serious. "Your father wanted to talk to me."

That pissed Todd off in at least six different ways. "Why? Was it so he could tell you to stay away from me because all women are evil whores or was it so he could tell you what a loser I am and you should run while you have a chance?"

"Neither," said Blair. "I mean, both of those things came up but I don't think that that's why he asked for me. I don't know what the real reason is, but it's something weird."

"What makes you say that?" Todd sat up as much as the bed allowed. It was nice to be interested in something normal instead of medication, his father's possible impending demise, and his own grotesque reflection.

"When I had an argument with him before—when he wouldn't let me see you— I accused him of taking things from you."

Todd thought he remembered that, but he wasn't sure. He hadn't been very with it at the time. It was a wonder that he'd managed to get out of his bed. "Okay," he said slowly.

"Your father kept coming back to that. He didn't really ask me straight out what I meant, but he mentioned it over and over. 'Those things you say I took from my son' or whatever. It was like he wanted to be sure what I did or didn't know."

"What do you know?"

Blair shook her head. "Nothing. All I meant was that he didn't appreciate you like he should have. As proud as he was when you made some amazing play on the football field, that's how proud he should have been all the time. When you made a mistake he should have helped you do better the next time instead of calling you names. You aren't stupid, you know. You never have been. You should have had parents who told you that."

"My mom did," Todd said softly. "But he took her away, too. Even before she died, he wouldn't let her see me. Just because he hated her and he hated me and he wanted to punish us both. Then, when she did died, the day after her funeral—literally the day after—he said he was going to work and he didn't have time for a snot-nosed kid who was hanging around crying."

Blair's eyes widened and she took his hand. "That's horrible."

"He hated me because I reminded him of my mother. He hated her because she was a women. That's Peter Manning: he hates women and he hates me."

"Did he ever have a girlfriend after your mom left?"

Todd started to roll his eyes, then stopped as a jolt of pain shot through his head. "Dozens. He never kept them very long. He wouldn't want to start seeing them as people or anything crazy like that. Sometimes one of them would be nice to me and he'd get rid of her right away. The smart ones, they pretended to be nice to me and then they'd laugh when he did his imitation of me crying."

Blair kissed Todd's hand. "He didn't deserve you."

"Doesn't," Todd corrected. "He'd not dead yet. He's dying, isn't he? He looked bad when you saw him?"

Blair nodded. "Real bad."

He appreciated that she hadn't whitewashed it. "So why would he care what you knew or didn't know? If he's dying anyway?"

"I don't know," said Blair. "But I know he was harping on it for a reason. He thought I wouldn't notice in between him calling me a gold digger and saying you were an idiot, but I did."

"How are you a gold digger? You have more money than I do."

"Maybe that's it." Blair flashed him a bright, dizzying grin. "Remember how that first night we met, I told you that I dreamed of being a princess? Maybe you're the wealthy prince of some exotic country—Mendorra or someplace. Maybe he kidnapped you at birth, and he thinks I know that and he's afraid I want to help you reclaim your rightful place on the throne—"

"You really think this is the time for fairytales, Blair?"

Blair shrugged. "I don't think there's ever a bad time for fairytales."

"So suppose your nice little story is true. How would you know? How could you possibly get that information?"

"I don't know. Dorian knows a lot of people. Maybe he thinks she told me."

"No. I know your aunt. She'd be working the angle herself, not letting you do it."

"You're probably right," Blair admitted.

"I know my dad, too," Todd said rapidly, warming to the subject. "If he thinks you know something, it isn't for no reason. He's a bastard a lot of the time, but he's not stupid and he doesn't give other people a lot of credit. Especially women-people. He doesn't go in for big conspiracy theories like if X, Y, and Z all happened, maybe you could know."

Blair considered that. "So if I'm right about how he's acting, it's not because I could hypothetically know something…"

"It's because you do know something," Todd completed. "Maybe not as much as he thinks you know. But you know something that is so simple that you don't know you know it. It's so close to home that you don't even think about it."

Blair puzzled over that for a moment. "Does he even know anything about me? Does he research the women you get involved with?"

Todd snorted with laughter. "No, he'd never bother. All he knows about you is your name and that I met you in Llanview."

"Did your family have any connections to Llanview before you went to L.U.? Why did you go there?"

"Best football program that offered me a scholarship. Nothing more complicated than that."

"Your dad doesn't have any business contacts there?"

"Not as far as I know. He sucked up to Viki when he met her, but he always sucks up to people who are richer than he is."

"Viki," Blair murmured to herself. "Viki's sister Tina, her mother's name was Manning. Irene Manning. You're sure she wasn't a relative?"

"Not as far as I know."

They tumbled through several more theories, but found nothing that Todd thought would have made Peter call Blair in to talk to him when he hadn't asked for his own son. But then, it wouldn't have surprised Todd to learn that his father had approached Blair for the express purpose of hurting Todd's feelings.

"It doesn't even matter," he said to Blair after a while. "He's not going to ask to see me anyway."

"Why do you need his permission? Just go see him."

"Like this?" Todd gestured at his bandaged face, suddenly keenly aware of it after a brief reprieve spent talking to Blair. "What if it gave him another heart attack?"

"It's not as bad as you think it is," Blair wheedled. "Just ask the nurses to take you to see him. It's the only way you'll ever know."

* * *

"You're sure it won't kill him? Seeing me looking like Seth in _The Fly_? He's just had a heart attack," Todd asked as the nurses ordered him into a wheelchair he didn't entirely need.

"You're his son. He should see you," one of them said.

"He's not doing well. He's weaker today than yesterday," said the other nurse with real compassion. "He might not be able to talk to you, but since you can sit with him you should."

As soon as they arrived at the room, the nurses retreated to give Todd and Peter privacy.

At first Todd wasn't sure that Peter was even conscious, but then Peter moved and tried to speak.

"Don't talk," Todd said automatically. "Just listen." He'd heard that enough the past few days when the doctors and Blair hadn't wanted him to upset his bandages by opening his mouth. "You need to listen," he added, made stronger by his own voice. "This might be the last time I ever talk to you."

Peter's silence seemed like acquiescence.

"You should know," said Todd, "that I'm going to stay with Blair even though you don't like her. I know you think I'm a screwup. And I have screwed up. But I've also been screwed. And I've been screwed by you." It was strange to hear the words coming out of his mouth when for the past few years, really, things had been almost okay between them. Peter hadn't threatened to disown Todd since Todd had implied that he wasn't positive that he wanted to play professional football. Peter hadn't really verbally eviscerated Todd since the night of the Spring Fling. And Peter hadn't beat Todd, since, well… not since Todd had gotten bigger than Peter.

"Nothing was ever good enough for you, Dad," Todd continued. "If I wanted to be your son, I had to be the biggest, the strongest, the toughest. The superstar. The bigshot. That's a loser's game, Dad. And I'm not playing any more. And I didn't come here to ask you if that's okay, or to tell you that I'm sorry, or anything. I don't even care what you think. You're not hurting me any more, and I just wanted to let you know that. And from here on in, I'm not just your son. I'm me. Just me."

The only sound in the room was Peter's labored breathing, amplified by the machines the helped him. Peter really did look terrible, just as Blair had warned. Todd stood up. He didn't need to play any games or search for any secret information. He just needed to leave. He could feel tears pricking behind his eyes and he certainly wasn't about to let them fall in Peter's presence. "I can see that you need your rest," he told Peter. He stood, ignoring the wheelchair, and made for the door.

To his shock, Peter's hand closed around his wrist. "Todd." He turned, disbelieving. "Please, don't go. I don't want to hurt you. I was so frightened when I heard that you'd been injured. I'm glad to see you on your feet again even if I know I'll never be on mine. I won't say I'm not concerned about your continued attachment to that… woman."

"If this is gonna be another lecture about how Blair's no good, I'm out of here," Todd warned.

Peter signaled that this conversation would be different. Todd doubtfully let Peter speak. "You know, lying here, in a room like this, with a tube helping me breathe, listening to that machine count out my heartbeats, you look at me as though I'm different." That was true, but Todd couldn't quite respond. "I've been thinking a lot about the past. I was… I didn't help you. I didn't know how. I was a lousy father."

Todd certainly hadn't expected an admission like that. "That's in the past. I'm trying to put all of that behind me." He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, looking at Peter's gray tinged face, that this was his last chance. "Blair can talk about those things that you took from me. I just want to move on."

There was a flash of light in Peter's dim eyes. "What did Blair tell you?"

Todd answered a question with a question, going on instinct alone. "Who was Irene Manning?"

Peter groaned against his breathing tube. "She was my cousin."

Todd did his best to hide his surprise. "She had a kid with Victor Lord. Tina, her name is."

"She had two children with Victor Lord," Peter managed. "First Tina. Then, years later, a boy. She couldn't raise him. Victor didn't want her raising him. He didn't want suspicion thrown on her and the child, although he had always wanted a son. He told Irene to get rid of the baby. Irene had a dear friend who couldn't have children of her own, a woman named Bitsy who just so happened to be married to her cousin Peter."

Todd's knees went weak and he sank back into his wheelchair, head throbbing anew.

"I've never loved you like a son," said Peter, his voice suddenly stronger. "Because you are not my son."

Peter's last rally had been just that- his last. The monitors tracking his heart sped up; Peter writhed in pain on the bed. Todd called for the nurses, but they were already there, moving Todd aside with kindness, doing what they could for Peter. Peter groped for the drawer beside his bed over Todd's objections.

"This is yours," he told Todd passing him a key on a long chain.

Every alarm in the room went off as Peter's body went rigid. He didn't speak anymore.

Through tears, Todd found his way back to his room. Blair was waiting for him and she helped him into bed, then climbed up beside him and lay with her arms around him until he decided that it was time to tell her. "It's over. I know you think it's stupid that I'm crying even though I know he's a jackass."

"I don't think it's stupid," Blair said. "All kids want to love their parents and want their parents to love them. Some day you'll have a son who calls another jackass 'Dad,' and you'll have to understand why he loves him even though the guy treated him like dirt on the bottom of his shoe, almost ruined him."

Todd couldn't understand how Blair could know a thing like that, but the world was so full of strange things that he didn't question it. Instead, he held out the key for Blair's inspection. "My legacy."

"I suppose it doesn't unlock a vault that reveals that you're a prince?"

"Worse," said Todd. "A Lord."

Blair looked at him, puzzled.

"Remember that day you came into my room at Viki's and we drew on that portrait with your lipstick?"

"Yeah," said Blair. "One of my favorite memories."

"That man was my father. Not Peter Manning. I was right. You knew something you didn't know you knew. Irene Manning was his cousin but she was my mother."

"Oh, Todd," Blair gasped. "No wonder he thought I was a gold-digger." She batted her eyes playfully. "Want to get married?"

Todd leaned over and kissed her. "Absolutely. But you gotta let me do the asking. I'm the guy. And you gotta wait until I can get a ring, and I can't do that until they let me out of here. And we should wait until I look a little less like Quasimodo so the priest doesn't have you declared mentally incompetent for marrying me, money or no money."

"Todd," said Blair. "I was kidding."

"I'm not."

"We've been together for less than a month. That's fast."

"We've known each other for two years. That's plenty."

A cat that ate the cream smile spread over Blair's face. "There's something appealing about going back to Llanview married to Victor Lord's son."

Todd didn't mind Blair's status-seeking and shock-hunting. He knew that she'd liked him long before she'd known about his secret past.

"I don't know if it comes with any money," Todd said. "For all I know, Peter was lying."

"You don't think that," Blair said, and she was right; he didn't. "You just don't want Kevin to be your nephew."

Todd cringed. He hadn't even thought of that. "But if Kevin is my nephew, that makes Viki…"

"Your big sister," said Blair with a soft smile. "No wonder she liked you so much. She sensed the blue blood under all that fratboy jock."

"Well, that's one good thing about this. It's weird. I knew there was something about her. Almost like I knew there was something about you."

"You knew there was something about me?"

"Always." He leaned into her, tired from his injuries and the medicine and the revelations and the shock of knowing Peter was gone forever. But he could handle it all if he had Blair.

In one of the nearby rooms, someone was playing music to soothe another patient. Todd didn't mind. He would ignore it and breathe in Blair and think of the future they had together even though the end of football and the end of Peter should have been the end of him. It seemed like a dream.

_Once upon a midnight dreary  
I woke with something in my head  
I couldn't escape the memory  
Of a phone call and what you said…_


	12. West Gladys Street Again

_I still got this dream that you just can't shake  
I love you to the point you can no longer take  
Well, all right, okay  
So be that way  
I hope and pray  
That there's something left to say_

He woke abruptly, furious that Blair wasn't beside him. The last thing she'd said was that they might not have ended up together if their lives had been different, and he wasn't going to let that garbage go unchallenged.

The second phone was shaking in his hands as he called Blair's second phone.

It rang three or four times. She must have fallen asleep. He couldn't blame her; he had managed to sleep despite the party that had spilled into the street not far below his window.

_But you  
Why you wanna give me a runaround?  
Is it a sure-fire way to speed things up  
When all it does is slow me down…  
_  
He squinted out the window again, ignoring the party and looking toward the hospital where Peter Manning had died. Thoughts of Peter always made him want to crawl out of his skin.

"Todd?" she whispered halfway through the fourth ring.

His need shifted to anger at the sound of her voice. "You shouldn't answer that way," he scolded. "What if they catch me with one of these phones on me and call the number in the memory to check? Don't talk like you're expecting me until you're sure it really is me."

"Well, we won't have to worry about that if you use all of our phones in one night!" she snapped back.

"I can get more phones. I can't get more you if they decide I've told you something and try to torture it out of you."

"You can't get more phones if you end up searching for Victor or these people in the middle of nowhere."

"Where I am right now, I can get more," he told her. He decided it wasn't that much of a violation of their own personal don't ask, don't tell policy. She had figured out that he wasn't currently in the middle of nowhere the minute she'd heard the music in the background. "If I don't call tomorrow, that won't be why."

He heard her swallow hard.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "During those eight years, there were so many times when just hearing your voice would have been the most amazing gift. I stopped wishing for most things because they seemed so far away. But your voice…" He trailed off, not sure where he'd even meant to go with this.

"I love you," she said, and he wasted precious seconds trying to speak around the lump in his throat.

"I wanted you to know that you're wrong," he rasped out at last.

"That's so sweet of you, Todd!" she said with false joviality. "Out of all the things I've missed about you, you telling me I'm wrong has got to be in the top thirty or forty thousand."

"Well, you were wrong," he told her, unapologetic. "You said that you and I might not have ended up together if our lives had been different. It's not true. We were always going to find each other. Even if the head witch had started brainwashing you before you could talk. You would have figured it out eventually and I would have waited. There is no alternate reality out there where you and I don't end up together. So you need to take back what you said."

"I take it back," she obliged.

"Good," he said.

"And I wouldn't have made you wait. I never could hold out that long against you."

"You made me wait pretty long this last time," Todd said, in observation rather than accusation.

"Too long. I thought you… well, I thought you changed your mind."

"Never."

"I didn't have any right to be jealous," Blair said. "We weren't together and I was the one who ended it. But when I thought about you and her… God, it killed me every time."

It was hard not to be annoyed at the thought of yet more time lost when they'd already lost so much. "If you'd given me any encouragement at all, it wouldn't have happened."

"You never needed encouragement before."

"You never decided to marry a man who put me in a hole to keep me away from our children for eight years before."

"I know," said Blair. No argument. No justification. No _Tomas thought he was serving his country_. "That was the idea. I came up with the worst thing I could think of, the thing that would hurt the most. I didn't ever really intend to marry him, you know."

"No," said Todd, his heart soaring with unexpected glee. "I didn't know that."

"Well, I didn't. I have too much respect for our children. He took you away from them even if it wasn't something he meant to do. He didn't do anything to fix it when he realized he'd been wrong, either. That wasn't his decision to make for Starr or Jack or anyone else."

Todd's smile widened. He hadn't had much to smile about in the past few days. "Tell me that again."

"Tell you what?"

"That you were never going to marry Tea's brother with the stupid name."

"I was never going to marry Tea's brother with the stupid name."

"You just wanted to make me so hopeless that I'd lose my mind and agree to crawl through the rest of my life without you so you could be mad at me for being hopeless and losing my mind and crawling through the rest of my life without you." Anger followed delight too quickly. The situation sucked to begin with, and the dream had left Todd feeling like an exposed nerve.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," said Blair hesitantly.

"Like that good idea to tell me you were pregnant when you weren't," Todd suggested. "Or the good idea to tell me Jack wasn't my son. Or the good idea to—"

"Oh, shut up!"

"Then you talk. By all means, Blair, enlighten me. Why did it seem like a good idea to tell me that you were going to marry the man who made sure I was tortured every day for eight years?"

"Because sometimes the only way to break a cycle of lies is with one more lie!"

The scary thing was that that kind of made sense to Todd. "How is that?"

"I loved you so much. I always have. I always will. Once you've forgiven a man for telling you that your son is dead, you know there's no hope for anything other than loving that man until you die. And you swore to me that you'd changed, that you weren't going to lie to me or the kids like that again. But you pulled the rug out from us when you lied about shooting Victor. I would have forgiven you like that for shooting Victor." She snapped her fingers. "My problem has never been the stupid crap you do. It's the way you lie to me. That's why it meant so much to me when you showed me those notes and the surveillance cameras. That's when I knew I could be with you. But two years ago, Jack was so fragile. He's not like Starr. Things don't roll off his back. I couldn't put him through another round of trusting someone and finding out that that person had lied to him like his feelings didn't even matter. And the only way to make sure that didn't happen would be to make sure I had an excuse for not melting into you the minute I saw you. Because my willpower is obviously non-existent when it comes to you."

"I tried to make it up to Jack."

"I know you did. You were wonderful. You were patient. You were tenacious."

"I wish I'd had more time."

"You'll have it. I believe you'll have it. Jack knows that this time you're not leaving because you want to."

"I didn't want to leave last time. Jack wouldn't even look at me after I was arrested for killing the father he actually wanted."

"It wasn't just that, Todd. It was that you lied about it and then you didn't want to face the consequences. Jack had a right to be angry."

"I know that."

"I know you do. But back then, it seemed to Jack like you'd just chosen Starr over him because she always lets you get away with anything. Then we saw the stories coming out of Port Charles about how you begged Carly for forgiveness, how you promised her that you would spend the rest of your life fighting for her. But you weren't going to spend the rest of your life fighting for Jack and his forgiveness."

"Fighting for Jack and the rest of the people on that list is what I'm doing right now. That's why I'm sitting here trying to figure out who these people are who sent the notes. I could have gone back to Port Charles and gotten together with her again, you know. Carly Jacks is an idiot."

"I liked her."

"She's an idiot," Todd repeated. "If she wasn't, she never would have divorced her husband. Did you meet Jax? No, I don't think you did. If you had, you would have chased him to Australia and tried to mend his broken heart or something."

"Todd!"

"I'm just saying, Jasper Jacks gave me the best handshake I've ever had in my life. For real, it was like a warm chocolate chip cookie."

"Maybe I should be worried about you leaving me for him instead of for Carly."

Even though he knew Blair was joking, he answered seriously. "The last thing you have to worry about is me leaving you for anyone. I know I said I'd fight for her for the rest of my life. You know why I could say that? I could say that because I knew it wouldn't take my whole life. It would have been easy because she's a fool and because we didn't really care about each other. You matter. Jack matters. When it was so clear that nothing I did was ever going to get either of you to forgive me… I wasn't like I used to be. When you were married to Max and I wanted to be married to you, I just decided to destroy your marriage."

"No kidding."

"You would have destroyed things yourselves, anyway," Todd pointed out. "And you know no one deserves to be stuck with Max for the rest of her life. I think even Skye mentioned that she was happy that she dodged that bullet."

Blair ignored the tangent. "But this time, after you went to Port Charles, it was different because Tomas was the one who turned you over to Irene's organization."

"Eight years is a long time. Everyone gives Victor a pass for poisoning me and dumping his kid and never washing his hoodie because he was tortured for one year, right?"

"I don't give him a pass for any of that."

"Good. But everyone else does. And no one… no one cared what happened to me for eight years and even though I screwed up I was tired. I couldn't do it again."

"I'm sorry I let you think I didn't care."

"I'm not telling you this so you can apologize. I'm telling you this because you're right. You and me, we're always better when we're honest with each other even though that goes against our usual instincts."

He could feel her smile. "I'm glad you called back."

"Me too. I had this dream." He shuddered. "Peter Manning was in it. But it was okay, because so were you."

"I hope I kicked his ass."

"Don't worry. You did."

"Then I'm glad you got some sleep, even if it was only a few hours."

"I'm sorry for waking you up, though."

"Don't be. The only reason I can sleep at all is that I imagine that you're in the corner of the room, sitting in a chair watching me. Doing that stalker thing you do that would be creepy on any other man."

"Blair, it's creepy when I do that, too. You just happen to like creepy."

"Like we said before you left. We don't do normal."

"No." Todd glanced at the latest note instructing him to return to the house at 10:00 that night. "But I wouldn't mind if we got a little bit closer to normal when this mess is over. Just a little bit."

"You have a deal, Todd," she said, as their phones beeped a warning and separated them once more.

**End.**

**Full Disclaimer: **One Life to Live and its character and situations are the property of ABC/Disney and Prospect Park. See the currentlawsuit for further details about what belongs to whom**.**

Some of the "Spring Fling" dialog was taken directly from 1993 OLTL.

Most of the songs quoted were also used in 1993 OLTL. For the sake of completion...

"Losing My Religion" (chapter 1 and 2) belongs to R.E.M., who also loan their name to the fic.

"Two Princes" (chapter 1) belongs to the Spin Doctors.

"Red Red Wine" (chapter 2) belongs to UB40.

"Somebody to Shove" (chapter 2) belongs to Soul Asylum.

"Give it Away" (chapter 3) belongs to Red Hot Chili Peppers.

"Walkin on the Sun" (chapter 9) belongs to Smashmouth.

"Run-Around" (chapter 11 and 12) belongs to Blues Traveler.


End file.
